title: Encoding error reading Greek characters string form SQL database
body: <p>I have a search form (with method GET) with only one text field named “search_field”. When a user submits the form, the typed by the user characters are posted to the URL. For example if the user type "blablabla" the generated URL will be something like that:</p>
  
  <pre><code>results.asp?search_field=blablabla
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In my MSSQL 2012 database I have a table named “Products” with a column named “kodikos” in it.</p>
  
  <p>I want to display all the records from the column “kodikos” containing the typed characters. My SQL select statement if the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"SELECT * FROM dbo.Products WHERE dbo.Products.kodikos LIKE '%' + ? + '%' "
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(the question mark is the  “search_field” that contains the typed by the user characters.</p>
  
  <p>All the above works perfect and I am getting the correct results. The problem that I am facing is with the Greek characters. For example when the user type “fff” my codes works perfect and finds all the records containing the characters “fff”. Also works perfect with numbers too. But if the user type in Greek characters “φφφ” I am not getting any results. And there are a lot of records with “φφφ”. The problem is that the Greek characters are not recognized at all.</p>
  
  <p>For your information:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>In my local PC with the same SQL version the Greek characters are recognized correctly with my code, because my regional settings are set in Greek. But the same code in the hosting server in US does not recognize them.</p></li>
  <li><p>All of my pages have UTF-8 encoding.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Can someone have any idea to solve this issue???</p>