Convert mysql data from latin1 to utf-8

to convert mysql data and table charsets from latin1 iso-8559-1 to utf-8 is pretty straightforward. I just took on an old database and attempted this conversion just now. This appears to have done the trick:

% /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump databasename tablename -uusername -p> tablename.sql
% iconv -f ISO_8859-1 -t UTF-8 tablename.sql > tableconverted.sql
% /usr/local/mysql/bin//mysql databasename -uroot < tableconverted.sql 
% /usr/local/mysql/bin//mysql databasename -uroot

mysql> alter table tablename convert to character set utf8;
Query OK, 1453459 rows affected (0.44 sec)
Records: 1453459  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

This mysql table data will now show as having a default charset of utf-8 and international characters contained in mysql will all behave as required .. we hope I will explore this a bit more as I get a chance in the next couple weeks and will update this post accordingly.

christo