Posted by Axel Schwenke on 10/13/05 11:35

"Dave Moore" <dave_m_moore@post2me.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> For development,
> I've been using Apache, MySQL and PHP installed on my local machine but now
> I'm having problems porting to my hoster's server.
....
> but there are two problems:
>
> 1). Firstly, the MySQL PASSWORD() command give different results on the host
> than it does on my local machine.

> SELECT PASSWORD ('mypassword')
>
> gives a 16 byte number as my books suggest. However, running the same
> command on the server gives a 41 bytes code!!!. Consequently, all my login
> functionality does not work!.
....

> 2). Secondly, I noticed that phpMyAdmin on the host shows a 'Collation'
> column with the value 'latin1_swedish_ci'. This column isn't present when
> using phpMyAdmin on my local machine, even though the DB contents show be
> identical. So what's that all about??.

As Christian said, you hoster uses a newer MySQL version than you. Both
features were introduced with MySQL 4.1. I suggest you upgrade your
development machine to the latest 4.1 version of MySQL.

Regarding PASSWORD(): the MySQL manual [1] strongly discourages from
using PASSWORD() for your own applications and recommends MD5() or
SHA1() for password hashing.

Regarding character sets and collations: this is great stuff if one
wants to build a multilingual website. For a unilingual application
it's enough to set the defaults for the used tables/databases to the
right values. I suggest reading the manual [2].


[1] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/encryption-functions.html
[2] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset.html


XL

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