Conversion of SBCS column to DBCS column

Sumeru · New User Joined: 15 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

Hi All,

Please help with this problem.

I have a table, say TableA which is residing in a TableSpace assigned with Bufferpool of 4K and CCSID is EBCDIC. TableA has a column "Comment"declared as
Comment VARCHAR(2048) FOR SBCS DATA. This field accepts the text input from the user from the front-end, probably Lotus notes.
When user is trying to enter GERMAN characters in this field, it is resulting in an overflow abend. We now need to provide the solution to avoid overflow abend.

We though of different ways.
1. To increase the field size:
As there is a limitation to the VARCHAR declaration (max 4000 bytes), even though we now increase it to 4000, in future if user enters few more German characters it may again result in an abend. And moreover the table space need to be altered to accommodate more bufferpool size(8k or so).

2. To convert the column from SBCS to DBCS:
Am not able to find anyway how to convert this. If i just try creating a sample table with VARCHAR(2048) FOR DBCS DATA, am getting DB2 error saying that DBCS is not a valid word.

3. Redefining the table with CCSID as UNICODE:
Will the UNICODE support double byte characters more efficiently than EBCDIC?
If so, what would be the impact to the existing data (which is in EBCDIC format) when loaded into the table defined with UNICODE.
How to do the conversion from EBCDIC to UNICODE?

If you think there is any other better solution with minimum impact to the data, please do suggest.

Thanks in advance

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:42 pm

Sumeru · New User Joined: 15 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

I inserted German and Chineese charcaters into two tables.. One defined as EBCDIC and other defined as UNICODE. While trying to view the data, i am seeing ???? in place of the characters. What can be done to view those characters as it is?

Can anyone please suggest me?