3 Ways to Show the Collation for your Connection in MariaDB

When you run a query against a MariaDB database, MariaDB uses a bunch of system variables to determine which character set and collation to use whenever queries are run. If the client uses a different character set to the server, then MariaDB can translate it into an appropriate character set and collation.

When sending the query results back to the client, MariaDB can translate these results back to a different character set altogether if required. MariaDB uses system variables to determine which character sets and collations to use at each of these steps.

Here are three ways to show the connection collation in MariaDB.

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How CONCAT_WS() Works in MariaDB

In MariaDB, CONCAT_WS() is a built-in string function that stands for Concatenate With Separator.

CONCAT_WS() performs a string concatenation on its arguments, with the first argument being the separator for the remaining arguments.

Concatenation is the operation of joining two or more strings end-to-end.

CONCAT_WS() accepts two or more arguments (although providing just two arguments would result in nothing being concatenated, due to the first argument being the separator, and the second being a single string to be concatenated with… nothing else).

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