title: character set between PHP and MySQL
body: <p>I am a little confused right now I have a PDO connection with <code>charset=utf8</code> 
  and the DB uses <code>latin</code>.</p>
  
  <p>What does this mean ? </p>
  
  <p>My thought is it means that every connection done by PHP either sending or receiving from the DB is encoded to <code>utf8</code>. However I read a lot that the DB too should using the same charset as the PHP .</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone please explains in details the role of the character set in PHP and in MySQL DB exactly and what's the benefit of aligning them? </p>