title: Illegal Mix Of Collations While Comparing Datetime with String
body: <p>I have created a MYSQL stored procedure that searches all columns of a table (parameter 1) to find if any of them contains a string (parameter 2). The problem is that when I compare a datetime column with a string that contains greek characters I get the following error:</p>
  
  <p><strong>SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_datetime LIKE '%ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ%';</strong><br>
  <em>Illegal mix of collations for operation 'like'</em></p>
  
  <p>The execution of the query is successful when I use latin characters. I know how to avoid checking columns based on their datatype, however I really want to be able to search for datetime strings as well. I use MySQL 5.5.24. The collation of the database is utf8_general_ci and the collation of the server is latin1_swedish_ci. I have tried the command SET NAMES utf8 before the query, with no luck though. Any ideas? Thanks.</p>