International support

[Soma Interesting <dfunct@example.com>]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently working a project that is intended to handle Japanese 
character sets. At an early point in the project we tested if putting some 
input into a web form, which ultimately was handled by php then stored in 
postgres would return fully intact - and it did. This left me comfortable 
that PHP and Postgres don't seem to care what language they're storing in 
fields or variables. I'm 'guessing' that this is because the data, whether 
its English or Japanese is being stored in binary (or something else?). Of 
course I wouldn't be able to sort the data or do anything else that would 
require PHP/Postgres to be able to interpret the data. However if I compile 
Postgres with locals support for the character set/language in question - 
then postgres will be able to sort Japanese. Is this right?

Have I got this all right so far? I have attempted to do my research on 
this - but finding a real beginners guide to international web application 
development has been a trick. And the best sources I have found on this 
topic generally are specific to Oracle or Java. Any links would be appreciated.

I've chosen Postgres. Is there anything MySQL does that Postgres doesn't in 
terms of language support that I should be aware of? I've read some success 
stories about Japanese sites being done with php (i18n version) and mysql - 
but I prefer postgres' procedure and relational capabilities.

Thanks for listening.