Field help (ADSCODDBA)

Defines the character set used to store the character fields in the database (this can take the values ASCIIor UNICODE) :

• The ASCII format corresponds to the management of the European languages : each character is stored in a byte, the accented characters being store in values greater than 128.
• The UNICODE format is only of use when wanting to manage the languages where the character set requires more than 256 combinations. This is the case for Chinese, for example.

The X3 client is natively UNICODE and as a result can managed this type of text. It remains a user choice, at the level of the database, between using the UCS2 or UTF8 formats :

• The format UCS2 is a format originating with Microsoft(TM), in which all characters are stored in two bytes ; the normal ASCII characters have the same code (but one of the two bytes is coded with a blank). It is the only format of the UNICODE type supported by SQL server.
• On the other hand Oracle accepts other formats, and in particular the UTF8 format, which is the most common. It is a format in which the characters are stored in a variable number of bytes ( from 1 to 5 according to the case : the ASCII characters are stored in one byte, the accented characters use two, and above that are found the Asiatic languages). It should be noted that Oracle supports other coding standards (UCS3, UCS4, UTF16...) and these standards can be used (on the condition that they are created manually in the database).

Internally and independent of the database format (for its temporary variables), the Adonix execution engine uses the format UTF8 (the sources of the processes are coded in UTF8),and the Windows client uses the standard UCS2.