ASA Database Administration Guide
  International Languages and Character Sets
    Understanding locales

Understanding the locale character set

Both application and server locale definitions have a character set. The application uses its character set when requesting character strings from the server. If character set translation is enabled (the default), the database server compares its character set with that of the application to determine whether character set translation is needed.

For more information about how to find locale settings, see Determining locale information.

The client library determines the character set as follows:

1. If the connection string specifies a character set, it is used.

   For more information, see CharSet connection parameter [CS].

2. Open Client applications check the locales.dat file in the Sybase locales directory.

3. Character set information from the operating system is used to determine the locale:

   • On Windows operating systems, use the GetACP system call. This returns the ANSI character set, not the OEM character set.

   • On UNIX, default to ISO8859-1.

   • On other platforms, use code page 1252.

The database server determines the character set for a connection as follows:

1. The character set specified by the client is used if it is supported.

   For more information, see CharSet connection parameter [CS].

2. The database's character set is used if the client specifies a character set that is not supported.

When a new database is created, the database server determines the character set for the new database as follows.

1. A collation is specified in the CREATE DATABASE statement or on with the dbinit utility.

2. The ASCHARSET environment variable is used if it exists.

3. Character set information from the operating system is used to determine the locale.

   • On Windows operating systems, use the GetACP system call. This returns the ANSI character set, not the OEM character set.

   • On UNIX, default to ISO8859-1.

   • On other platforms, use code page 1252.

The locale character set and language are used to determine which collation to use when creating a database if none is explicitly specified.