How can encoding issues impact the execution of SQL queries in PHP?

Encoding issues can impact the execution of SQL queries in PHP when the database and PHP script have different character encodings. This can lead to incorrect data being retrieved or stored, as the characters may not be interpreted correctly. To solve this issue, you can set the character encoding for the database connection in PHP using the `SET NAMES` query.

// Establish a connection to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Set the character encoding for the connection
$conn->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

// Now you can execute SQL queries without encoding issues