Configuring MySQL 5.1 to store non-ASCII characters

To set up a MySQL 5.1 database with JIRA to work with non-ASCII (non-English) characters, please do the following:

1. Create a new MySQL database using the following command:
   create database jiradb default character set utf8;
2. Grant all the required permissions to the JIRA user for the database as described here.
3. Change JIRA's JDBC URL (in the dbconfig.xml file in your JIRA Home Directory) to use the new database and be:
   jdbc:mysql://<your_server>:<port>/jiradb?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8
   Please note the '&' XML escape for the ampersands in the url above is needed since it is specified in an xml file.
4. Start JIRA and complete the setup process.

Please ensure that you create a new database using the correct character set and ensure that JIRA creates all its tables on startup without problems. This should allow you to work with all characters supported by Unicode, which covers most characters out there.

Please ensure that you are using the latest MySQL JDBC driver (see Connecting JIRA to MySQL for information on the JDBC driver).

Also please ensure you are using the UTF-8 character encoding in JIRA (Administration -> Global Settings -> General Configuration).