mysql  -- 5.0.51b
DBI   --  1.52
DBD::mysql -- 4.007

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;
use Encode;

binmode STDOUT, ":utf8";

#my $DSN = "DBI:mysql:database=test;host=localhost;mysql_enable_utf8=1"; # fn.1
my $DSN = "DBI:mysql:database=test;host=localhost";
my $dbh = DBI->connect( $DSN, "", "" );

my @cols = qw/country city pronunciation/;
my $create_table = "create table test_utf8 (".
    join( ',', map { "$_ varchar(50)" } @cols ) . ")";

$dbh->do( "drop table if exists test_utf8" );
$dbh->do( "$create_table default character set=utf8" );
$dbh->do( "set names utf8" ); # fn.2

my @src_data = ( "Germany", "K\xf6ln", "k\x{0153}ln" );
print "Sending to db: @src_data\n";

#my @tst_data = @src_data; # fn.3
my @tst_data = map { encode( 'utf8', $_ ) } @src_data;

my $sth = $dbh->prepare( "insert into test_utf8 (".
			 join( ',', @cols ). ") values (?,?,?)" );

$sth->execute( @tst_data );

my ( @db_data ) = $dbh->selectrow_array( "select ".join( ',', @cols ).
                                         " from test_utf8" );

$_ = decode( 'utf8', $_ ) for ( @db_data ); # fn.4

print "Fetch from db: @db_data\n";
my $diff = 0;
for ( 0 .. $#db_data ) {
    $diff++ if ( $db_data[$_] ne $src_data[$_] );
}
print "So that's bad\n" if $diff;