UNICODE on AS400

[bvining@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Frank,

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but if you're on a
DBCS capable system and attach DBCS display devices, then the Unicode
to/from CHRID conversions that I mentioned earlier also take place.

Unicode represents a character set that encompasses all of the various
SBCS and DBCS characters sets available on iSeries, and as such can be
considered to be a superset of DBCS and SBCS.  Many developers who
previously may have written DBCS and SBCS versions of an application
may now elect to write one version based on Unicode (or continue to use
DBCS and SBCS as they aren't going away anytime soon).

Unicode/UCS2 does double disk space requirements for those data elements
needing the expanded character set of Unicode (when compared to SBCS),
but this "doubling" would typically not apply to numeric values (cost,
inventory on hand, etc.), internal status fields (active, in process,
held, etc.); and can be mitigated by not having to duplicate objects
due to the limitations of EBCDIC character sets.  So to assume a
doubling of disk space requirements seems a bit much.

Unicode implementation would not be source code compatible with DBCS
(or SBCS) solutions; but from an application user point of view you
should be able to do the same (or better) job in terms of implementation
and capability.

Bruce

>
>Thanks for the info Bruce,
>As per the manual I can set up SBS for the devices and
>set the CHRID on the CRTDEV.
>Perhaps you can help me with some DBCS considerations.
>It seems to me that UNICODE supercedes DBCS.
>UNICODE also doubles you disk space requirements,
>but disk is relatively cheap, programmers cost.
>We can buy a DBCS enabled version of an application.
>I see that a UNICODE implementation is not
>compatible with DBCS, am I right.
>
>Frank Kolmann
>