MySQL encoding problem

This problem is very common and solution for it can be found very easily. But when I faced it, it was not so easy to find appropriate solution for me. So, I have MySQL db. I saved there data (for instance, strings) written in Russian (or Ukrainian). But when I wanted to view data (through MySQL console or browser in my web application) there were only ???????? (question marks). I tested all posted solutions in Internet (to change my.ini, to change sql script), but none helped. My founded solution was simply to set char set while creating db. For example :
CREATE DATABASE DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
USE ;
SET NAMES utf8;

Encoding problem with tomcat

Recently I had problem with encoding. Now I'm going to describe it. I created simple html template which used russian (or ukrainian) letters. Saved this template in UTF-8 encoding. When I view this template file in firefox or IE everything was written good. But when I wrapped it into war and put it into tomcat/webapp directory and tried to view it like localhost:8080/domain/site, I could not read a word. Firefox or IE also showed that current encoding is UTF-8. Changing of all encodings didn't help. The solution for current problem was to add option to JAVA_OPTS in catalina.bat (or catalina.sh in Linux) like -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8.