[db-wg] Internationalized domain names in the data abase?

Sorry if I am interrupting any ongoing discussion, but I just have a quick and simple question... Is it permitted to have internationalized domain names appear within the database? By that I really mean to ask if it is permissible to have there appear in the data base IDNs which are written in their UTF-8 encoded forms, rather than, say, in punycode? I have found at least one specific case where an IDN does appear in the data base as a UTF-8 encoded string, but since I had never seen that before, I just wanted to know if that was an anomalous mistake or if it was consider normal, acceptable, and routine.