CI 1.6 - MySQL "SET NAMES" on MySQL 4.0.17

[eluser]Derek Jones[/eluser]
1) If you're migrating to 4.1 - 5, there's actually a simple way to convert it live, that is remarkably performance friendly.

For each field:

Code:

UPDATE `{$table}` SET `{$field}` = CONVERT(CONVERT(`{$field}` USING binary) USING utf8)

Then on the table itself:

Code:

ALTER TABLE `{$table}` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci

I've done this fairly recently on large (150MB-ish) databases, and it only took about 15 seconds.

2) I agree, for read-heavy apps, which are the most common, that InnoDB has some severe drawbacks. There's no need to use InnoDB, though, MyISAM is still the default on most hosts with 4.1 - 5, and you can of course set this implicitly in your table creation queries.