# Changing Discovery database charset

**URL:** <https://discuss.openedx.org/t/changing-discovery-database-charset/3746>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** devops, how-to\
**Created:** [December 2, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/changing-discovery-database-charset/3746 "2020-12-02T16:43:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![spokerman12](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/spokerman12/32/1611_2.png) [@spokerman12](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/spokerman12)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/changing-discovery-database-charset/3746/1 "2020-12-02T16:43:37Z")

</div>

Hi! Doing `SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'char%';` on the discovery database returns:

```
 'character_set_client', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_connection', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_database', 'latin1'
'character_set_filesystem', 'binary'
'character_set_results', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_server', 'latin1'
'character_set_system', 'utf8'
'character_sets_dir', '/rdsdbbin/mysql-5.6.44.R1/share/charsets/'

```

While on edxapp returns

```
'character_set_client', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_connection', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_database', 'utf8'
'character_set_filesystem', 'binary'
'character_set_results', 'utf8mb4'
'character_set_server', 'latin1'
'character_set_system', 'utf8'
'character_sets_dir', '/rdsdbbin/mysql-5.6.44.R1/share/charsets/'

```

I’m not really sure about which is the default, but does anyone have any experience changing the discovery charset to utf8? Besides the expected DB data structure potential issues, will it cause problems down the road?