Hi,
during the last week there were at least two mail-sequences
having to do with Unicode and characters and functions available
or not available. Now I would like to point to some facts:
1. if the installation-parameter is set
_UNICODE=NO
* the meta-data (info which tables, views, columns, users,... exist) is stored
in ASCII.
* character data can be stored as ASCII (Latin1) or as BYTE/RAW
* UPPER/LOWER will work correctly for Latin1
* MAPCHAR SETS are available
2. if the installation-parameter is set
_UNICODE=YES
* the meta-data is stored in UCS2, each character using two bytes
* character data can be stored as ASCII (Latin1) or as UNICODE (UCS2) or as
BYTE/RAW
* UPPER/LOWER will work correctly for Latin1 if stored in ASCII and
it will work correctly for Latin1 plus some other languages if stored in
UNICODE and the kernel
version is >= 7.3.0.29
* MAPCHAR SETS are NOT available
--> if as many characters as possible have to stored in one row and Latin1 is
convenient
for this data, even in a Unicode-database, this column/these columns should use
ASCII-storage.
--> if UPPER/LOWER is needed for a non-western-european language, the installation
parameter
_UNICODE hast to be set to YES (Unicode-database) AND the corresponding column(s)
has/have to use UNICODE-storage and the newset kernel has to be used.
The storage of character columns can be specified for ALL following definitions with
the installation parameter DEFAULT_CODE and then only using CHAR (n) / VARCHAR (n) /
LONG.
I assume that DEFAULT_CODE is either set to ASCII or to UNICODE (possible only if
_UNICODE=YES),
but never set to INTERNAL (=BYTE).
If one character column should NOT use the default-character-storage, then
CHAR (n) ASCII or CHAR (n) UNICODE or VARCHAR (n) ASCII or VARCHAR (n) UNICODE or
LONG ASCII or LONG UNICODE can be specified even in a Unicode-database (besides the
BYTE-specification).
CHAR (n) UNICODE, VARCHAR (n) UNICODE and LONG UNICODE are only allowed in
case of _UNICODE=YES.
Elke
SAP Labs Berlin
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