A national language (as opposed to a programming language) is a language used in or by a nation. The database manager can work with data in national languages represented by a single-byte character set (SBCS) or by a double-byte character set (DBCS). The database manager will also support MBCS data from other platforms, which will be converted to SBCS and DBCS data. The following are some of the single-byte character sets that are shipped with the database manager:
Examples of double-byte character sets that are shipped with the database manager include:
If you want a complete list of the character sets that are available, review the SYSTEM.SYSCHARSETS catalog table.
This chapter describes the facilities that the database manager provides for national languages:
This facility allows you to specify character sets and CCSIDs other than the installation or migration default. The application server default CHARNAME for a new installation is INTERNATIONAL (CCSID=500). The application server default CHARNAME for a migrated system is ENGLISH (CCSID=37). The application requester default CHARNAME is always INTERNATIONAL (CCSID=500). The database manager can use alternative character sets for identifying character usage and for folding lowercase characters to uppercase.
This facility provides for the proper interpretation and use of national language characters not included in the default character set, for example, characters with umlauts, accents, and tildes.
This facility also provides for the proper interpretation of data from application requesters or application servers which use different character sets and code pages. Character conversion is performed on data when the CCSID of the application requester and the CCSID of the application server are different. The application server default CCSID is determined from the application server default CHARNAME.
It is very important that the application server and application requester have the same CCSID value unless there is a specific reason for them to be different. When the application server and application requester have different CCSID values, character conversion cannot be avoided. This conversion has an associated performance overhead, and causes performance degradation. CCSID conversion of data also affects the sargability of predicates. For more information on performance, see the DB2 Server for VSE & VM Performance Tuning Handbook manual.
This option, when it is set to YES, allows the database manager to correctly interpret the shift-out (X'0E') and shift-in (X'0F') characters that delimit EBCDIC DBCS strings. The DBCS option is set on both the application server and the application requester.
The database manager provides multiple language message support to allow users to select the language in which error and informational messages appear (the language must already be installed). The operator can select the language for operator messages.
If an ISQL user selects a national language that is different from the national language set by the operator on the application server, when the ISQL user issues an operator command the output is in the language set by the operator.
For example, the operator sets the application server national language for operator messages to ENGLISH. The ISQL users set the application requester to KANJI. When the user issues an operator command, the result is in ENGLISH.
The database manager provides multiple language HELP text support. ISQL users can interactively retrieve help information on messages and codes and command reference information. The help facility allows ISQL users to retrieve help in the language of their choice (provided that the language version of the HELP text is installed). Information on DB2 Server for VSE HELP text is contained in this chapter, and in the DB2 Server for VSE & VM Database Administration manual.
The database manager also provides graphic data types for use with strings of DBCS characters, as well as a mixed subtype for character data that contains both DBCS and SBCS characters. For more information about using graphic and mixed data, refer to the DB2 Server for VSE & VM SQL Reference manual.