utf8_bin vs. utf_unicode_ci
collation, database, mysql, relation
Solution
It depends on what you need.
The `utf8_bin` collation compares strings based purely on their Unicode code point values. If all of the code points have the same values, then the strings are equal. However, this falls apart when you have strings with different composition for combining marks (composed vs. decomposed) or characters that are canonically equivalent but don't have the same code point value. In some cases, using `utf8_bin` will result in strings not matching when you expect them to. Theoretically, `utf8_bin` is the fastest because no Unicode normalization is applied to the strings, but it may not be what you want.
`utf8_general_ci` applies Unicode normalization using language-specific rules and compares strings case-insensitively. `utf8_general_cs` does the same, but compares strings case-sensitively.
Problem
My table Website ``` Website_Name//column name Google Facebook Twitter Orkut Frype Skype Yahoo Wikipedia ``` I i use utf8_bin collation then my query to search wikipedia in Website is ``` Select Website_Name from Website where lower(Website_Name)='wikipedia' ``` And if i use utf8_unicode_ci then my select query to search wikipedia in Website is ``` Select Website_Name from Website where Website_Name='wikipedia' ``` Now I want to know which collation is best depending upon the following queries