title: Clarifications needed about SET NAMES instruction and character_set variables
body: <p>Recently, i had the need to store emoji in some of the table in my DB (MySQL / MariaDB), so after a bit of research i've found out that the encoding i was using (UTF8) wasn't enough and i needed to move to UTF8-mb4.
  I then changed the charset of the table i needed to the new encoding, but clearly it wasn't enough. I changed also my connection string i use when creating a new <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.data.common.dbconnection?view=net-6.0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">DbConnection</a>, specifying the encoding utf8mb4, and still i couldn't manage to save emojy.
  Finally i've found this answer <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28540772/using-utf8mb4-in-mysql">Using utf8mb4 in MySQL</a> , which suggested the use of <code>SET NAMES</code> instruction.
  This solved my problem, but i noticed that the instruction was active until i restarted the db service.
  I would like to know:</p>
  <ol>
  <li>which exactly is the effect of using <code>SET NAMES</code> instruction, especially for the tables that are using the old utf8 encoding?</li>
  <li>which is the proper way to use it? (In my.ini or in my code?)</li>
  <li>Is there anything i need to worry about this instruction?</li>
  <li>Are there other ways to set character_set_client and character_set_connection to utf8mb4?</li>
  </ol>