How to Fix the Collation and Character Set of a MySQL Database manually

1. Create a new database with the required collation as per the appropriate documentation (for example Connecting JIRA to a Database)
2. Follow our Switching Databases using an XML backup to migrate from the old database (with the incorrect collation) to the new one, with the correct collation.

If the recommended method for some reason is not suitable for your scenario, please follow this article to manually fix the collation at the database server side. After the solution is implemented, please test the application thoroughly to ensure everything works correctly and as expected.

What is Collation?

The collation determines how results are sorted and ordered. In newer versions of Atlassian applications, collation changes may become more strict - i.e, an application requires a certain collation. You must ensure your database has the correct collation for the application it will be used with.

Collation in MySQL can be complicated because you can have a separate collation set at:

1. The database level
2. The table level
3. The column level

Additionally, the information inside a column may be encoded incorrectly as well - causing the data in that column to be displayed incorrectly.

Which collation can you use?

Not all versions of Jira and Confluence support utf8mb4 (which provides support for 4-byte characters). You may need to use utf8.

Checking the collation and character set

It may be necessary throughout the process to re-check the settings at the database, table, and column level.  

Here are the commands for checking it:

To check database collation:
use jiradb;
SELECT @@character_set_database, @@collation_database;
 
To check Table collation:
SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA
    , TABLE_NAME
    , TABLE_COLLATION 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES


To check Column collation:
SELECT TABLE_NAME 
    , COLUMN_NAME 
    , COLLATION_NAME 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 

Dealing with Foreign Key constraints

It may be necessary to ignore foreign key constraints when making changes to a large number of columns.

mysql> ALTER TABLE AO_1FA2A8_SCRUM_POKER_SESSION CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
ERROR 3780 (HY000): Referencing column 'SESSION_ID' and referenced column 'ISSUE_KEY' in foreign key constraint 'fk_ao_1fa2a8_scrum_poker_vote_session_id' are incompatible.
mysql> ALTER TABLE AO_1FA2A8_SCRUM_POKER_VOTE CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
ERROR 3780 (HY000): Referencing column 'SESSION_ID' and referenced column 'ISSUE_KEY' in foreign key constraint 'fk_ao_1fa2a8_scrum_poker_vote_session_id' are incompatible.

You can use the SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS command to ignore foreign key constraints while you update the database.

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
 
-- Insert your other SQL Queries here...
 
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

This should be done for each session that is opened to the database

Changing the database collation

In the example below, change: 

• <yourDB> to your actual database name
• <charset> to either utf8 or utf8mb4
• <collation> to either utf8_bin or utf8mb4_bin

To change the database collation:

ALTER DATABASE <yourDB> CHARACTER SET <charset> COLLATE <collation>

Changing table collation

In the example below, change: 

• <yourDB> to your actual database name
• <charset> to either utf8 or utf8mb4
• <collation> to either utf8_bin or utf8mb4_bin

To create the ALTER SQLs, run the below SQL and use the ALTER SQLs in the resultset to update the table collation:

SELECT CONCAT('ALTER TABLE `',  table_name, '` CHARACTER SET <charset> COLLATE <collation>;')
FROM information_schema.TABLES AS T, information_schema.`COLLATION_CHARACTER_SET_APPLICABILITY` AS C
WHERE C.collation_name = T.table_collation
AND T.table_schema = '<yourDB>'
AND
(
    C.CHARACTER_SET_NAME != '<charset>'
    OR
    C.COLLATION_NAME != '<collation>'
);

Changing column collation

In the examples below, change: 

• <yourDB> to your actual database name
• <charset> to either utf8 or utf8mb4
• <collation> to either utf8_bin or utf8mb4_bin

To create the ALTER SQLs, run the below SQL and use the ALTER SQLs in the resultset to update the collation for varchar columns:

SELECT CONCAT('ALTER TABLE `', table_name, '` MODIFY `', column_name, '` ', DATA_TYPE, '(', CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH, ') CHARACTER SET <charset> COLLATE <collation>', (CASE WHEN IS_NULLABLE = 'NO' THEN ' NOT NULL' ELSE '' END), ';')
FROM information_schema.COLUMNS 
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = '<yourDB>'
AND DATA_TYPE = 'varchar'
AND
(
    CHARACTER_SET_NAME != '<charset>'
    OR
    COLLATION_NAME != '<collation>'
);

To create the ALTER SQLs, run the below SQL and use the ALTER SQLs in the resultset to update the collation for non-varchar columns:

SELECT CONCAT('ALTER TABLE `', table_name, '` MODIFY `', column_name, '` ', DATA_TYPE, ' CHARACTER SET <charset> COLLATE <collation>', (CASE WHEN IS_NULLABLE = 'NO' THEN ' NOT NULL' ELSE '' END), ';')
FROM information_schema.COLUMNS 
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = '<yourDB>'
AND DATA_TYPE != 'varchar'
AND
(
    CHARACTER_SET_NAME != '<charset>'
    OR
    COLLATION_NAME != '<collation>'
);

  The "DATA_TYPE" query currently fails for enum columns.  When "DATA_TYPE" is replaced with "COLUMN_TYPE", the generated SQL is also valid for enum columns.

Server character set considerations for Confluence

If you want to use utf8mb4, and character_set_server  is not set to utf8mb4  in the my.cnf  or my.ini  file on your MySQL Server and you can't change this (for example utf8 is required for a database used by another application) you will need to add the connectionCollation=utf8mb4_bin parameter to your connection URL in order to use utf8mb4. See the Connector/J 8.0 or Connector/J 5.1 documentation for more information. 

<property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://yourhost:3306/confluence?connectionCollation=utf8mb4_bin</property>

You might also need to make sure that your collation and character set are properly defined at your my.cnf file (e.g. using character-set-server = utf8mb4 collation-server = utf8mb4_bin)