CREATE TABLE `components` ( 
  `component_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, 
  `name` varchar(127) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL, 
  `title` varchar(127) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL, 
  `url` varchar(1023) DEFAULT NULL, 
  `description` text, 
  `flag_mask` tinyint(4) DEFAULT '0', 
  PRIMARY KEY (`component_id`), 
  UNIQUE KEY `name` (`name`,`title`) 
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=230052 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

#!/usr/bin/perl  
 
use strict; 
use warnings; 
 
use DBI; 
 
my $dbName = 'reflib_prod_candidate'; 
my $dbHost = 'collector-home'; 
my $dbUser = 'collector'; 
my $dbPass = '*******'; 
 
my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=$dbName;host=$dbHost"; 
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $dbUser, $dbPass, { AutoCommit => 1, RaiseError => 1}); 
die "Can't connect to the db" unless $dbh; 
 
# Select a component that I know has non-utf8 data in the title field. 
my $sql = "select name, title from components where name = 'xaf'"; 
my $result = $dbh->selectrow_arrayref($sql); 
die "no result" unless $result and scalar(@$result); 
print("name=$result->[0], title=$result->[1]\n"); 
 
# I cut and paste the title into a Perl string, but cannot use it 
# to match the database result. That's probably ok. 
print "can't match non-utf8 perl string by cut-and-paste!\n"  
    unless $result->[1] eq "xaf\u9879\u76EE\u96C6\u5408(CRM,ERP,OA,SCM)--qq:651922596"; 
 
# I assign the result from the db to a Perl var. Whew! It does match itself in Perl, at least. 
my $title = $result->[1]; 
print "can't match non-utf8 perl string assigned to a local var!\n" 
    unless $result->[1] eq $title; 
 
# However, the Perl string does NOT work as a SQL query. 
$sql = "select name, title from components where title='$title'"; 
$result = $dbh->selectrow_arrayref($sql); 
print  "Can't match db non-utf8 data after retreival to a perl string\n" 
    unless $result and scalar(@$result);

$ perl tmp.pl 
name=xaf, title=xaf\u9879\u76EE\u96C6\u5408(CRM,ERP,OA,SCM)--qq:651922596 
can't match non-utf8 perl string by cut-and-paste! 
Can't match db non-utf8 data after retreival to a perl string