I don't recall reading much of a discussion about this, so here it goes. Older releases of DB2 for VM and VSE had a default code page of 37 (in the USA). And if you have been migrating DB2 since then, you may still be at code page 37.
The default code page for DB2 for VM and VSE since V7(?), has been code page 500 (for new installs). On DB2/UDB V 9, the default code page seems to be UTF-8 (some sort of unicode base), or code page 819 depending on the code page of the client. And in the future, the code page will default to UTF-8 no matter what the code page is of the client. You can override all of this during the "create database" function. Incompatible code pages leads to performance issues. Not only does a conversion need to be done between code pages, but the difference in code pages can cause DB2 to perform non-optimal path selection. (bad thing) Initially, I was going to create the DB2/UDB databases, using a code page that was compatible with our VSE databases. For a while, I was happy with that idea. Then I started thinking about our remote users. If I change the code page on DB2/UDB to be compatible with VSE, then the code page will be incompatible with the PC users. (Throw a rock in a pond and watch the ripples<G>.) Is it easier to change the mainframe code to be compatible with DB2/UDB unicode page? Or hunt down all the PC based applications we have now and in the future to change them to use a different code page (assuming we care about their performance)? Obviously, CICS needs to be compatible as we have performance tools and end user experience, but I can see 5 - 10 years from now, that the LAN applications will make up most of the DB2/UDB workload. Has anyone else thought about this and have a real solution. Or is this another one of "it depends"? What ever decision I make or don't make, will, most likely, result in us being locked into it for a 10-15 year time frame. I want to make sure I haven't overlooked something, before I cross my P's and dot my Q's and head on over the cliff <G>. Thanks Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting Law of Cat Elongation A cat can make her body long enough to reach just about any counter top that has anything remotely interesting on it.
