insert problem with special characters

Hi All,

I have a web application in JSP/Servlet/PostgreSQL(7.3). I have a text
input field where users can enter special cent symbol to represent cent
unit just like dollar symbol. So I have to use
java.net.URLDecoder.encode(text_input,"UTF-8") to fetch the request
input on the server. 

If I just insert the encoding text into the database, it will store the
text in URL-encoding format. But I want to store text in ASCII-readable
format (and cent symbol is stored just like dollar symbol), rather then
in URL-encoding format. If I am using
java.net.URLDecoder.decode(text_input,"UTF-8") to decode the text before
I do inserting, the cent symbol is stored as a question mark symbol in
database. I tried to find a postgres encoding function without success.
Does anyone know what the problem is and how to solve it?

Thanks a lot.

-John

GSP Marketing Technologies, Inc.
john.wang@popmanager.com