Re: Changing system CCSID from 65535 to 37

On 15-Jun-2015 12:17 -0600, Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc. wrote:

I am at a client that still has their CCSID set at 65535. They are
considering trying out PHP, and the Zend Server installation
pre-requisites expect it to be 37.

There should be no legitimate expectation by any sfw installation that the system value QCCSID should be any particular value. Such an expectation of a specific CCSID for particular user(s) is legitimate; e.g. the user performing the install, the UsrPrf of the product, or even the users using the software [but the proper expectation should be that a specific CCSID is set, rather than any specific CCSID].

Seems to me there were some minor issues or gotchas with just
changing the system CCSID to 37, but I don't recall what they were,
or maybe that was just some old FUD I have lurking in the back of my
head. So is there any reason to be careful about just changing the
system CCSID? IBM i 7.1, USA English only.

Any users with the special-value *SYSVAL would be affected; perhaps the effect is negligible or otherwise unnoticeable, but the change would be reflected in the resolution from the *changed* System Value. Any users with a Language Identifier (LANGID) for which the new QCCSID does not match their _defaulted_ CCSID, would suddenly experience a different [and likely /wrong/] Default Coded Character Set Identifier setting for their jobs. Otherwise, the change from *HEX [aka 65535] to 37 is probably the least likely for any impacts to be encountered; the likely issues being with programs interfacing to ASCII or to EBCDIC CCSID tagged data for which translations now occur when they did not previously.