Hi Almut,

Thank you for all your help. I really do appreciate it. You were right. I am receiving ascii from the MySQL side. The output barring a couple of 4e41's is mainly 3f3f3f3f's. :(

A really puzzling thing though is that while I was waiting for your response I managed to connect to the MySQL database with Java/JSP and it outputs to the webpage all of the Japanese.

But as far as setting up the database in MySQL during the installation of the MySQL server 5.0 (v5.0.27) I chose the following parameters:

1. Developer Machine
2. Multifunctional Database
3. InnoDB Tablespace Settings - I just chose where to store the data files.
4. Decision Support(DSS)/OLAP - low number of connections cause at this stage it's just me mucking around with it.
5. Enabled TCP/IP Networking and Strict Mode
6. Best Support for Multilingualism - Make UTF8 the default character set (it even has Nihongo in Kanji which is a nice touch to this option)
7. Install as a windows service and Include BIN directory in Windows PATH - both ticked.
8. Set the root user password....etc....

So the 'default character set' option is probably the most relevant.

I then used Navicat which is a client that can connect to a MySQL database server; to Import all of the tables from MS Access into MySQL. First I did this into the 'test' database that is automatically generated by MySQL during it's installation but doesn't have any tables in it.

When I opened an imported table I was overjoyed to see Japanese characters and not question marks. I then checked the tables in Navicat's design view and found the following (relevant) parameters:
Character set: utf8
Collation: utf8_general_ci

So it would appear that the data is being stored in the MySQL database as utf8 based on the settings appearing in Navicat but Perl says it is ascii based on all of those hex codes returned and the display of question marks.

The thing I don't get is that Java was able to do it on the JSP page. This makes me think that maybe it is an IIS thing. As I previously mentioned ASP works ok with a MS Access file but shows the same behaviour (i.e. the question marks) as Perl when used with the MySQL database.

Perhaps the JSP works only because it is actually going through the embedded Tomcat webserver in the NetBeans IDE.

What do you reckon? Looks like IIS eh? God I am so sorry!!! I was sure you would not reply last time. Thrown in the idiot user basket - "Are you sure your computer's plugged in..." scenario...

But thank you so much for your patience and guidance. I will look further into the IIS angle. A quick google looks like this may well be the case.

My sincerest apologies for the time you may have wasted on this but I really do appreciate you sticking with it for this long so we could at least narrow it down to a possible IIS problem.

Thank you!!!

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