Sybase 12.4.2 manual Understanding character set translation, Using multibyte collations, 336

Understanding character set translation

Using multibyte collations

This section describes how multibyte character sets are handled. The description applies to the supported collations and to any multibyte custom collations you may create.

Adaptive Server IQ provides collations using several multibyte character sets.

For a complete listing, see “Understanding collations” on page 328

Understanding collations.

Adaptive Server IQ supports variable-width character sets. In these sets, some characters are represented by one byte, and some by more than one, to a maximum of four bytes. The value of the first byte in any character indicates the number of bytes used for that character, and also indicates whether the character is a space character, a digit, or an alphabetic (alpha) character.

Adaptive Server IQ does not support fixed-length multibyte character sets such as 2-byte Unicode (UCS-2) or 4-byte Unicode (UCS-4).

Understanding character set translation

Adaptive Server IQ can carry out character set translation among character sets that represent the same characters, but at different positions in the character set or code page. There needs to be a degree of compatibility between the character sets for this to be possible. For example, character set translation is possible between EUC-JIS and Shift-JIS character sets, but not between EUC-JIS and OEM code page 850.

This section describes how Adaptive Server IQ carries out character set translation. This information is provided for advanced users, such as those who may be deploying applications or databases in a multi-character-set environment.

Character translation for database messages

Error and other messages from the database software are held in a language resource library. Localized versions of this library are provided with localized versions of Adaptive Server IQ.

336