MySQL UTF8 Collation to use for German umlauts

Question

Which MySQL UTF8 collation can I use that on one hand supports case-insensitive searches ('Hello' == 'hello') but on the other hand does not ignore umlauts in comparisons ('hällö' != 'hallo')?

utf8_unicode_ci/utf8_general_ci seem to do the former but not the latter, utf8_bin does the latter but not the former.

At first glance utf8_swedish_ci seems to work, but I am not sure if this does not cause any other problems.

What's the best practice here?

Answer 1

Case insensitive search and NOT ignoring umlauts in comparison both work with utf8_swedish_ci:

mysql> CREATE TABLE users (
  id INT(11) default NULL auto_increment,
  name varchar(60) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (id),
  UNIQUE KEY name(name)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE utf8_swedish_ci;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

mysql>  INSERT INTO `users` (`name`) VALUES ('Hello'), ('hällö');
Query OK, 2 rows affected (0.10 sec)
Records: 2  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

mysql> SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='hello';
+----+-------+
| id | name  |
+----+-------+
|  1 | Hello |
+----+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='hallo';
Empty set (0.00 sec)