title: JDBC character encoding
body: <p>I have a Java Web application running on GlassFish 3 and JPA (EclipseLink) on MySQL. The problem I'm facing is that if I'm saving entities to the database with the <code>update()</code> method, <code>String</code> fields lose integrity; <code>'?'</code> is shown instead of some characters.</p>
  <p>The server, pages and database are configured to use <code>UTF-8</code>.</p>
  <p>After I post form data, the next page shows the data correctly. Furthermore it &quot;seems&quot; in NetBeans debug that the <code>String</code> property of the current entity stores the correct value too. I don't know if NetBeans debug can be trusted; might be that it decodes correctly, however it's incorrect.</p>