I have an idea for an XML database. I have actually been playing around with this for several years and have made considerable progress. Now, I need to do some fine tuning. I am asking your opinion, based on your own experience, of which encoding would be best to use for the XML database document. It seems that the choices are: 1) ANSI, 2) Unicode, 3) Unicode big endian, 4) UTF-8, and 5) UTF-16. Up until recently, I thought that I understood what each of these encodings meant. But after reading over http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utf-8#Description, I am more confused than ever. Mind you, my sole purpose in using encoding other than ANSI was to enable various 'unicode' characters, Chinese, Hindu, and Cyrillic text. At first, I thought I needed UTF-16 to accomplish this. But I am now inclined to think that even ANSI or UTF-8 might suffice. Unfortunately, I have constructed alot of code using UTF-16 encoding and have run into snags in attempting random access of the files (ala SAX). I would greatly value your opinions on this matter. Thanks.