This is an error that we’ve seen from time to time:
If the JDBC driver gives the error Unknown character set: ‘usa7’, try adding &characterEncoding=UTF-8 to the end of the JDBC connect string.
Geoffrey
Solution 2: Upgrade the MySQL JDBC driver to version 5.1.
Solution 3: Comment out these 2 lines in my-ib.cnf:
#collation_server=ascii_bin#character_set_server=ascii