Just in case if Arabic characters appearing as ????? in your column and if you are using MySql DB along with .NET Provider,
Check below properties of schema, table and column and connectionstring that use to connect to DB
- DEFAULT_CHARACTER_SET_NAME = utf8
- DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME = utf8_general_ci
- TABLE_COLLATION = utf8_general_ci
- COLLATION_NAME = utf8_general_ci
- CHARACTER_SET_NAME = utf8
- .NET Connection string set to have = 'charset=utf8'
Connection string example
'datasource=<server>;port=3306;username=<userid>;password=<password>;sslmode=none;database=<dbname>;charset=utf8'
Queries that may help to find above information are
SELECT * FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA S
WHERE schema_name = "<database-name>";
SELECT * FROM information_schema.`TABLES` T,
information_schema.`COLLATION_CHARACTER_SET_APPLICABILITY` CCSA
WHERE CCSA.collation_name = T.table_collation
AND T.table_schema = "<database-name>"
AND T.table_name = "<table-name>";
SELECT * FROM information_schema.`COLUMNS` C
WHERE table_schema = "<database-name>"
AND table_name = "<table-name>"
AND column_name = "<column-name>";