title: MYSQL COLLATE Performance
body: <p>I have a table called <code>users</code> with a column <code>firstname</code> and with collation <code>utf8_bin</code> </p>
  
  <p>I want to know what happens under the hood when I execute an query like</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * FROM `users` `a` WHERE `a`.`firstname` = 'sander' COLLATE utf8_general_ci
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the column <code>firstname</code> isn't an index, what happens with the performance when the command executed?</p>
  
  <p>And what if the default collation was <code>utf8_general_ci</code> and the query is executed without <code>COLLATE</code></p>
  
  <p>I want to know the impact it has on a big table (8 million+ records)</p>