Tigase, MySQL and UTF-8

I have just spent a 'nice' evening trying to resolve character encoding problem on one of Tigase installations. The installation uses MySQL database. It took me a bit time to figure it out and it looks like it requires changes in a few places to make sure a correct encoding is always used.

I have updated the MySQL database initialisation guide and documented all the places and steps needed to have it working properly. Apparently creating tables with UTF-8 encoding is not enough, apparently MySQL 5.1.x and 5.0.x handle this differently. For MySQL 5.1.x you need updated code for all stored procedures.

Please have a look at the link given for more details. At the end of the page there is a section describing UTF-8 settings or MySQL. Most of them are not related to the Tigase server and might be useful for any database installation with data stored in UTF-8 character set.