---
title: Character Set Support Reference
---

This topic provides a referene of the character sets supported in HAWQ.

The character set support in HAWQ allows you to store text in a variety of character sets, including single-byte character sets such as the ISO 8859 series and multiple-byte character sets such as EUC (Extended Unix Code), UTF-8, and Mule internal code. All supported character sets can be used transparently by clients, but a few are not supported for use within the server (that is, as a server-side encoding). The default character set is selected while initializing your HAWQ using `hawq init.` It can be overridden when you create a database, so you can have multiple databases each with a different character set.

<table style="width:100%;">
<colgroup>
<col width="16%" />
<col width="16%" />
<col width="16%" />
<col width="16%" />
<col width="16%" />
<col width="16%" />
</colgroup>
<thead>
<tr class="header">
<th>Name</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Language</th>
<th>Server</th>
<th>Bytes/Char</th>
<th>Aliases</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td>BIG5</td>
<td>Big Five</td>
<td>Traditional Chinese</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1-2</td>
<td>WIN950, Windows950</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>EUC_CN</td>
<td>Extended UNIX Code-CN</td>
<td>Simplified Chinese</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-3</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>EUC_JP</td>
<td>Extended UNIX Code-JP</td>
<td>Japanese</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-3</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>EUC_KR</td>
<td>Extended UNIX Code-KR</td>
<td>Korean</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-3</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>EUC_TW</td>
<td>Extended UNIX Code-TW</td>
<td>Traditional Chinese, Taiwanese</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-3</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>GB18030</td>
<td>National Standard</td>
<td>Chinese</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1-2</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>GBK</td>
<td>Extended National Standard</td>
<td>Simplified Chinese</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1-2</td>
<td>WIN936,Windows936</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>ISO_8859_5</td>
<td>ISO 8859-5, ECMA 113</td>
<td>Latin/Cyrillic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>ISO_8859_6</td>
<td>ISO 8859-6, ECMA 114</td>
<td>Latin/Arabic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>ISO_8859_7</td>
<td>ISO 8859-7, ECMA 118</td>
<td>Latin/Greek</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>ISO_8859_8</td>
<td>ISO 8859-8, ECMA 121</td>
<td>Latin/Hebrew</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>JOHAB</td>
<td>JOHA</td>
<td>Korean (Hangul)</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-3</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>KOI8</td>
<td>KOI8-R(U)</td>
<td>Cyrillic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>KOI8R</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>LATIN1</td>
<td>ISO 8859-1, ECMA 94</td>
<td>Western European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO88591</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>LATIN2</td>
<td>ISO 8859-2, ECMA 94</td>
<td>Central European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO88592</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>LATIN3</td>
<td>ISO 8859-3, ECMA 94</td>
<td>South European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO88593</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>LATIN4</td>
<td>ISO 8859-4, ECMA 94</td>
<td>North European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO88594</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>LATIN5</td>
<td>ISO 8859-9, ECMA 128</td>
<td>Turkish</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO88599</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>LATIN6</td>
<td>ISO 8859-10, ECMA 144</td>
<td>Nordic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO885910</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>LATIN7</td>
<td>ISO 8859-13</td>
<td>Baltic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO885913</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>LATIN8</td>
<td>ISO 8859-14</td>
<td>Celtic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO885914</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>LATIN9</td>
<td>ISO 8859-15</td>
<td>LATIN1 with Euro and accents</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO885915</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>LATIN10</td>
<td>ISO 8859-16, ASRO SR 14111</td>
<td>Romanian</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ISO885916</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>MULE_INTERNAL</td>
<td>Mule internal code</td>
<td>Multilingual Emacs</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-4</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>SJIS</td>
<td>Shift JIS</td>
<td>Japanese</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1-2</td>
<td>Mskanji, ShiftJIS, WIN932, Windows932</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>SQL_ASCII</td>
<td>unspecified2</td>
<td>any</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>UHC</td>
<td>Unified Hangul Code</td>
<td>Korean</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>1-2</td>
<td>WIN949, Windows949</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>UTF8</td>
<td>Unicode, 8-bit </td>
<td>all</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1-4</td>
<td>Unicode</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN866</td>
<td>Windows CP866</td>
<td>Cyrillic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ALT</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>WIN874</td>
<td>Windows CP874</td>
<td>Thai</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN1250</td>
<td>Windows CP1250</td>
<td>Central European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>WIN1251</td>
<td>Windows CP1251</td>
<td>Cyrillic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>WIN</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN1252</td>
<td>Windows CP1252</td>
<td>Western European</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td><p>1</p></td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>WIN1253</td>
<td>Windows CP1253</td>
<td>Greek</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN1254</td>
<td>Windows CP1254</td>
<td>Turkish</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>WIN1255</td>
<td>Windows CP1255</td>
<td>Hebrew</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN1256</td>
<td>Windows CP1256</td>
<td>Arabic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>WIN1257</td>
<td>Windows CP1257</td>
<td>Baltic</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>WIN1258</td>
<td>Windows CP1258</td>
<td>Vietnamese</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>ABC, TCVN, TCVN5712, VSCII </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

**Note:**
-   Not all the APIs support all the listed character sets. For example, the JDBC driver does not support MULE\_INTERNAL, LATIN6, LATIN8, and LATIN10.
-   The SQLASCII setting behaves considerable differently from the other settings. Byte values 0-127 are interpreted according to the ASCII standard, while byte values 128-255 are taken as uninterpreted characters. If you are working with any nonASCII data, it is unwise to use the SQL\_ASCII setting as a client encoding. SQL\_ASCII is not supported as a server encoding.

## Setting the Character Set<a id="settingthecharacterset"></a>

`hawq init` defines the default character set for a HAWQ system by reading the setting of the ENCODING parameter in the gp\_init\_config file at initialization time. The default character set is UNICODE or UTF8.

You can create a database with a different character set besides what is used as the system-wide default. For example:

``` pre
CREATE DATABASE korean WITH ENCODING 'EUC_KR';
```

**Note:** Although you can specify any encoding you want for a database, it is unwise to choose an encoding that is not what is expected by the locale you have selected. The LC\_COLLATE and LC\_CTYPE settings imply a particular encoding, and locale-dependent operations (such as sorting) are likely to misinterpret data that is in an incompatible encoding.

Since these locale settings are frozen by hawq init, the apparent flexibility to use different encodings in different databases is more theoretical than real.

One way to use multiple encodings safely is to set the locale to C or POSIX during initialization time, thus disabling any real locale awareness.

## Character Set Conversion Between Server and Client<a id="charactersetconversionbetweenserverandclient"></a>

HAWQ supports automatic character set conversion between server and client for certain character set combinations. The conversion information is stored in the master pg\_conversion system catalog table. HAWQ comes with some predefined conversions or you can create a new conversion using the SQL command CREATE CONVERSION.

| Server Character Set | Available Client Sets                                                                                                          |
|----------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| BIG5                 | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| EUC\_CN              | EUC\_CN, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                                  |
| EUC\_JP              | EUC\_JP, MULE\_INTERNAL, SJIS, UTF8                                                                                            |
| EUC\_KR              | EUC\_KR, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                                  |
| EUC\_TW              | EUC\_TW, BIG5, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                            |
| GB18030              | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| GBK                  | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| ISO\_8859\_5         | ISO\_8859\_5, KOI8, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866, WIN1251                                                                      |
| ISO\_8859\_6         | ISO\_8859\_6, UTF8                                                                                                             |
| ISO\_8859\_7         | ISO\_8859\_7, UTF8                                                                                                             |
| ISO\_8859\_8         | ISO\_8859\_8, UTF8                                                                                                             |
| JOHAB                | JOHAB, UTF8                                                                                                                    |
| KOI8                 | KOI8, ISO\_8859\_5, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866, WIN1251                                                                      |
| LATIN1               | LATIN1, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                                   |
| LATIN2               | LATIN2, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN1250                                                                                          |
| LATIN3               | LATIN3, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                                   |
| LATIN4               | LATIN4, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                                   |
| LATIN5               | LATIN5, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| LATIN6               | LATIN6, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| LATIN7               | LATIN7, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| LATIN8               | LATIN8, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| LATIN9               | LATIN9, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| LATIN10              | LATIN10, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| MULE\_INTERNAL       | MULE\_INTERNAL, BIG5, EUC\_CN, EUC\_JP, EUC\_KR, EUC\_TW, ISO\_8859\_5, KOI8, LATIN1 to LATIN4, SJIS, WIN866, WIN1250, WIN1251 |
| SJIS                 | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| SQL\_ASCII           | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| UHC                  | not supported as a server encoding                                                                                             |
| UTF8                 | all supported encodings                                                                                                        |
| WIN866               | WIN866                                                                                                                         |
| WIN874               | WIN874, UTF8                                                                                                                   |
| WIN1250              | WIN1250, LATIN2, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8                                                                                          |
| WIN1251              | WIN1251, ISO\_8859\_5, KOI8, MULE\_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866                                                                      |
| WIN1252              | WIN1252, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1253              | WIN1253, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1254              | WIN1254, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1255              | WIN1255, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1256              | WIN1256, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1257              | WIN1257, UTF8                                                                                                                  |
| WIN1258              | WIN1258, UTF8                                                                                                                  |

To enable automatic character set conversion, you have to tell HAWQ the character set (encoding) you would like to use in the client. There are several ways to accomplish this: 

-   Using the \\encoding command in psql, which allows you to change client encoding on the fly.
-   Using SET client\_encoding TO. Setting the client encoding can be done with this SQL command:

    ``` pre
    SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'value';
    ```

    To query the current client encoding:

    ``` pre
    SHOW client_encoding;
    ```

    To return the default encoding:

    ``` pre
    RESET client_encoding;
    ```

-   Using the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable. When PGCLIENTENCODING is defined in the client's environment, that client encoding is automatically selected when a connection to the server is made. (This can subsequently be overridden using any of the other methods mentioned above.)
-   Setting the configuration parameter client\_encoding. If client\_encoding is set in the master `hawq-site.xml` file, that client encoding is automatically selected when a connection to HAWQ is made. (This can subsequently be overridden using any of the other methods mentioned above.)

If the conversion of a particular character is not possible — suppose you chose EUC\_JP for the server and LATIN1 for the client, then some Japanese characters do not have a representation in LATIN1 — then an error is reported. 

If the client character set is defined as SQL\_ASCII, encoding conversion is disabled, regardless of the server’s character set. The use of SQL\_ASCII is unwise unless you are working with all-ASCII data. SQL\_ASCII is not supported as a server encoding.