Datacom use of EBCDIC code pages

Products

• Datacom
• Datacom/AD
• Datacom/DB

Issue/Introduction

There are multiple code pages used for EBCDIC format, and it is possible to have, for example, 1047 for the operating system, 037 for COBOL compiles, and 500 for MQ-Series tasks.

Does Datacom use any special code pages when storing its data?

Resolution

The MUF and Datacom/DB databases do nothing special with the definition of a code page but will default to use the system setting.

Essentially, if you define a field as CHAR(8), you will store 8 characters in the field, and we don't perform any data translation of data in the records, but we store whatever the application passes to us.

There is, of course, a different response when dealing with DBCS data (like Kanji, for example), or data that originates through an application using JDBC type-4 connections, where a codepage can be specified in the Datacom Server configuration. Additionally, some application tools like Ideal can use an internal translation table to change characters like currency symbols. Again, this has no effect on the actual data storage, but only on the interpretation of the input and output characters in specific applications.

Additional Information

For more examples of commonly-used codepages, you can refer to these web pages found through an Internet search for EBCDIC Code Pages:

Code Page (Wikipedia)

As always, please contact Broadcom support for Datacom if you have further questions.