Graphic encoding schemes

Each graphic string is further defined as one of:

DBCS data
Data in which every character is represented by a character from the double-byte character set (DBCS) that does not include the shift-out or shift-in characters.

Every DBCS graphic string has a CCSID that identifies a double-byte coded character set. If necessary, a DBCS graphic string is converted before it is used in an operation with a DBCS graphic string that has a different DBCS CCSID.

Unicode data
Data that contains characters represented by two or more bytes. Each Unicode graphic string is encoded using either UCS-2 or UTF-16. UCS-2 is a subset of UTF-16. The CCSID for UCS-2 is 13488. The CCSID for UTF-16 is 1200.

When graphic-string variables are not explicitly tagged with a CCSID, the associated DBCS CCSID for the job CCSID is used. If no associated DBCS CCSID exists, the variable is tagged with 65535. A graphic-string variable is never implicitly tagged with a UTF-16 or UCS-2 CCSID. See the DECLARE VARIABLE statement for information on how to tag a graphic variable with a CCSID.