UTF8 Characterset

[oramad]

Hello,

We have two databases one with UTF8 character set and the other with US7ASCII character set. The schemas across these two databases are identical. The UTF8 database is serving our European customers and US7ASCII database is serving our US customers. As UTF8 is a multibyte character set and requires more space(2 bytes instead of 1 bytes) for storing certain characters certain columns need to be increased with factor 100%-200%.

As both the DB's(US7ASCII and UTF8) are using identical schemas will it be a good idea to change the field length on both the DB's for consistency reasons.

Are there are implications in doing this? Also is there any white paper on this scnario?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

[DaPi]

I'd love to know what this question means!

Would you care to rephrase it in simple words that someone approaching senility can understand?


P.S: reminds me of a spoof IBM press release from the late 70's which claimed that, since the hardware was so reliable, the parity bit would be used for storing data and future Operating System would be based on a 9-bit byte.