Bhimalapuram.co.in
Databases in Telugu - Using MySQL

Telugu

Our Experience:

System Used : Ubuntu-8.0.4. Telugu, Sanskrit fonts were loaded in the standard place- with other pre-installed fonts. Input methods: Only English. Data in Telugu prepared with Lekhini/Swecha Editors- or their derivatives and pasted in the required files with geditor. MySQL version 5.0.96-0ubuntu3.

Creating Database:

Database was created in English language- because we felt it more convenient. We could create database with Telugu script.

Creating tables Table and fields were created in English language. Fields were defined as Indic- utf8 - in nature. Syntax used: "CREATE TABLE `pattika`( `kir1` varchar(40) character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL, `raga` varchar(40) character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL, `filename` varchar(40) NOT NULL, `kir2` varchar(40) character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL)" - to create a table wih name of "pattika" and fields named "kir1, raga, kir2, filename". kir1, raga, kir2 were having data in Telugu with maximum of 12 characters. We - as a matter of caution - defined length as 40. Filename had data in English - with special characters removed. We could create table with names of columns/table in Telugu script when we we wanted. Such tables (and data bases) in Telugu script functioned/responded normally to commands, just as databases/tables/columns with names in English script did.

Loading Data: Table was filled with data with the command "Load Data.....". Syntax used: " LOAD DATA INFILE "/tmp/xxx.txt" INTO TABLE [name of the table] CHARACTER SET UTF8 FIELDS TERMINATED BY ';'. "xxx.txt" - name of the file which was stored in "/tmp" directory. We used comma (,) as separator for fields. We found that, in our system, using "/tmp" directory gave flawless results.

Use of select and other commands: The command "charset utf8;" was typed to enable display of Telugu script. When this command was not used, the result was not correct. It gave result like this:

Normal Image

After enabling Indic fonts with "charset utf8" command , the result was:

Utf-8 Fonts.

We believe that the not-so-correct presentation of Telugu script is due to our system not having support for Telugu language. When this or other responses to commands in mysql were viewed with geditor the data in Telugu script appeared flawlessly.

We could send the data correctly, into outfile with this command: "Select ........from [name of table] into outfile "/tmp/xyz.txt" fields terminated by ","; " and view the contents with geditor.

utf-8 Fonts-2

We could also pipe the data with "/T (name of the file)". We could read and handle the data correctly from the destination file with geditor.

Our Opinion:

MySQL (version 5.0 onwards) handles data in Telugu (just like data in English) flawlessly. MySQL can deal with databases, tables in Telugu script/language flawlessly- provided (1) Telugu language support is enabled and telugu fonts are properly installed, (2) the command "charset utf8;" is typed before working with Telugu in mysql- while creating/changing databases or tables and while loading data into the tables.

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