This chapter explains how phpMyAdmin stores and fetches data, and how it deals with the character set and collation features available under MySQL. The program's behavior is highly dependent on the MySQL version used.

A character set describes how symbols for a specific language or dialect are encoded. A collation contains rules to compare and sort the characters of a character set. (See the MySQL 4.1.x and Later section in this chapter.)

The character set used to store our data may be different from the one used to display it, leading to data discrepancies. Thus, a need to transform the data arises.