ASA Database Administration Guide
International Languages and Character Sets
Understanding character sets in software
Database users working at client applications may see or access strings from the following sources:
Data in the database Strings and other text data are stored in the database. The database server processes these strings when responding to requests.
For example, the database server may be asked to supply all the last names beginning with a letter ordered less than N in a table. This request requires string comparisons to be carried out, and assumes a character set ordering.
The database server receives strings from client applications as streams of bytes. It associates these bytes with characters according to the database character set. If the data is held in an indexed column, the index is sorted according to the sort order of the collation.
Database server software messages Applications can cause database errors to be generated. For example, an application may submit a query that references a column that does not exist. In this case, the database server returns a warning or error message. This message is held in a language resource library, which is a DLL or shared library called by Adaptive Server Anywhere.
Client application The client application interface displays text, and internally the client application may process text.
Client software messages The client library uses the same language library as the database server to provide messages to the client application.
Operating system The client operating system has text displayed on its interface, and may also process text.
For a satisfactory working environment, all these sources of text must work together. Loosely speaking, they must all be working in the user's language and/or character set.