MySQL SELECT statements are not case-sensitive - mysql

Question

I am trying to select items in MySQL with consideration for case sensitivity, but I am having issues getting MySQL to perform any case distinction.
For example, all of the following statements
mysql> SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE name="alpha";
mysql> SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE name="ALPHA";
mysql> SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE name="aLpHa";
return the same results:
+----+-------+
| id | name |
+----+-------+
| 1 | alpha |
+----+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
I recognize that some character sets and collations in MySQL do not distinguish between case, and so changing the character set and collation from the default is a necessary step. I have tried changing and converting the table's character set and collate to utf8 and utf8_unicode_ci respectively, but I am uncertain if it worked correctly.
mysql> SHOW TABLE STATUS;
+---------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+-------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| Name | Engine | Version | Row_format | Rows | Avg_row_length | Data_length | Max_data_length | Index_length | Data_free | Auto_increment | Create_time | Update_time | Check_time | Collation | Checksum | Create_options | Comment |
+---------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+-------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| mytable | InnoDB | 10 | Compact | 68886 | 83 | 5783552 | 0 | 7372800 | 17825792 | 67039 | 2014-08-02 15:05:07 | NULL | NULL | utf8_unicode_ci | NULL | | |
+---------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+-------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)
mysql> SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM mytable;
+-------+-------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+---------+
| Field | Type | Collation | Null | Key | Default | Extra | Privileges | Comment |
+-------+-------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+---------+
| id | int(11) | NULL | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment | select,insert,update,references | |
| name | varchar(10) | utf8_unicode_ci | NO | | NULL | | select,insert,update,references | |
+-------+-------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+---------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)
As you can see from above, the collation of the table has now been changed to utf8_unicode_ci and the collation of the relevant column has been changed as well.
Is there any additional step I need to perform so that MySQL will make a distinction with respect to character case? I am using MySQL Server version: 5.5.37-0ubuntu0.13.10.1 (Ubuntu).
Note that I cannot simply use queries with the BINARY keyword, such as:
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE BINARY name="alpha";
because I am actually just using MySQL through Django's ORM, which does not support this type of lookup as far as I know. Thank you in advance for your help!

Answer 1

You can use option:
COLLATE utf8_bin
Example:
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/60d73/1/0
vs.
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/60d73/2/0
You can alter your table using:
alter table mytable ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;