[FIXED] Unknown initial character set index '255' received from server

Issue

During attempt to create HibernateSession application fails with exception:

Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Unknown initial character set index '255' received from server. Initial client character set can be forced via the 'characterEncoding' property. at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1055) at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:956) at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:926)

I found one possible solution here but unfortunately I do not have access to DB server thus I cannot change its configuration. So please pay attention that this is not a duplicate, because suggested solution was provided for the DB server changes and in my case I don't have such access.

Is it any chance to fix this issue on client side? Below you can find my pom.xml file and java code where I create session.

import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration;

public class HibernateUtil {
    private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory = buildSessionFactory();

    private static SessionFactory buildSessionFactory() {
        try {
            // Create the SessionFactory from hibernate.cfg.xml
            return new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory();
        } catch (Throwable ex) {
            // Make sure you log the exception, as it might be swallowed
            System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);
            throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
        }
    }

    public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
        return sessionFactory;
    }

    public static void shutdown() {
        // Close caches and connection pools
        getSessionFactory().close();
    }
}

And my pom.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    ...
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>mysql</groupId>
            <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
            <version>5.1.6</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
            <version>4.3.5.Final</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
            <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
            <version>6.9.12</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project> 

Solution

Some further investigation showed that the issue was exactly in changes which were done in MySQL v.8.0:

Character Set Support

Important Change: The default character set has changed from latin1 to utf8mb4. These system variables are affected:

The default value of the character_set_server and character_set_database system variables has changed from latin1 to utf8mb4.

The default value of the collation_server and collation_database system variables has changed from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci.

All these change were already processed in new version of mysql-connector-java and there is no need to configure your MySQL. So change from 5.1.6 to 5.1.44 fix the issue:

<dependency>
    <groupId>mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.44</version>
</dependency>

Answered By - user9927978
Answer Checked By - Dawn Plyler (JavaFixing Volunteer)