exposed
       as an SQL object, but are visible in this view.
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
     <term>character set</term>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       A named SQL object that identifies a character repertoire, a
       character encoding, and a default collation.  A predefined
       character set would typically have the same name as an encoding
       form, but users could define other names.  For example, the
       character set <literal>UTF8</literal> would typically identify
       the character repertoire <literal>UCS</literal>, encoding
       form <literal>UTF8</literal>, and some default collation.
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
   </variablelist>

   You can think of an <quote>encoding</quote> in PostgreSQL either as
   a character set or a character encoding form.  They will have the
   same name, and there can only be one in one database.
  </para>

  <table>
   <title><structname>character_sets</structname> Columns</title>
   <tgroup cols="1">
    <thead>
     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       Column Type
      </para>
      <para>
       Description
      </para></entry>
     </row>
    </thead>

    <tbody>
     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>character_set_catalog</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null.
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>character_set_schema</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null.
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>character_set_name</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Name of the character set, currently implemented as showing the name of the database encoding
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>character_repertoire</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Character repertoire, showing <literal>UCS</literal> if the encoding is <literal>UTF8</literal>, else just the encoding name
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>form_of_use</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Character encoding form, same as the database encoding
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>default_collate_catalog</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Name of the database containing the default collation (always the current database, if any collation is identified)
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>default_collate_schema</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Name of the schema containing the default collation
      </para></entry>
     </row>

     <row>
      <entry role="catalog_table_entry"><para role="column_definition">
       <structfield>default_collate_name</structfield> <type>sql_identifier</type>
      </para>
      <para>
       Name of the default collation.  The default collation is
       identified as the collation that matches
       the <literal>COLLATE</literal> and <literal>CTYPE</literal>
       settings of the current database.  If there is no such
       collation, then this column and the associated