title: What are the ramifications of storing UTF8 text in a Latin1 database?
body: <p>I have a mysql database in default charset <code>latin1</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>mysql&gt;  SELECT SCHEMA_NAME 'database', default_character_set_name 'charset', DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME 'collation' FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA ;
  +--------------------+---------+-------------------+
  | database           | charset | collation         |
  +--------------------+---------+-------------------+
  | dbname12345        | latin1  | latin1_swedish_ci |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The driver, in this case knex + node-mysql, is configured to <code>charset: 'utf8'</code>. Text is therefore encoded, stored and retrieved by the driver in UTF8. </p>
  
  <p>However, mysql <em>thinks</em> the data is in <code>latin1</code>. What are the ramifications of mixing charsets like this?</p>