In https://docs.moodle.org/32/en/MySQL_full_unicode_support, it is recommended to convert MySQL to use full unicode enoding (ie. utf8mb4). I have two questions about the conversion.
1. If I do not convert MySQL to utf8mb4 for Moodle 3.2.3, is there any great impact to the Moodle usage and performance of Moodle 3.2.3?
2. Can the conversion to utf8mb4 be done without stopping Moodle, that is, users can still use Moodle while doing the consversion?
Thanks!
Ryan
From what I read it seems like it limits emoticon use since some require the 4-byte character set.
I did the conversion on our Moodle installs without putting them in maintenance mode. That said, ours our not in heavy use so I'm not absolutely sure users wouldn't see errors if they tried to update a table that was in process of conversion to utf8mb4. But it worked for me.
Basically the only difference (as Bret mentioned) would be that you'd get "stuck" with 2-bytes instead of 4, which would limit the character set. That being said, if you do not intend to use them, it should not pose that much of a problem. The conversion, on the other hand, should not be attempted on a live DB whenever possible, because you'd risk a chance of data being entered in the wrong format just in the milisecond the table is being converted.
