Malformed string

If you see this error, it usually means the the client is not able to transform the string you wrote to the character set acceptable to the Firebird server. Here's a short explanation how this works:

In your client program, you type in some text, which is then shown on the screen. This text has the same character set like the rest of your environment. Typically it is UTF8 on Linux, and various WIN-xxxx charset on Windows (WIN-1252 in Western Europe, WIN-1250 in Eastern Europe, etc.).

Your client tool should then transliterate this to the connection character set of your Firebird connection, and the Firebird server transliterates that to the character set of the actual columns when it stores the string into the database. If your client tool is not 'smart' enough to do the transliteration, you should set the connection character set to be the same as your environment character set. For example, if you're using isql and have a West-Europe Windows, you should type this at the beginning of your isql session:

SET NAMES WIN1252;

With this, you can even work with UTF8 databases while using isql. Some tools (like, for example, FlameRobin) are more advanced and do the needed transliteration for you, so you can use some other character set for connection (for example UTF8) without problems.