Re: Czech and German Characters in the same database

stephane.magnan@eur.autodesk.com ("Stephane Magnan") wrote: : Hi, : : I'm trying to insert some German and Czech characters in the same : database. : : At the moment I cannot do it and I believe it's not possible with : Informix Online 7.20. : : Because, I use the code set 8859-1 for Germany characters and for : Czech charcters the code set is 8859-2. : : I look at the file generated by glfiles, I didn't find code sets egal : between Germany characters and Czech characters. : : Does it mean it's not possible ??? Could your application handle this? The problem of course is that 8859-1 and 8859-2 put different characters in the same numeric position in the code set. When the characters are finally inserted into the database they are only bytes and there is only a global knowledge for the whole database what these bytes represents. They must all be in one set seen from the database. Of course you could use one or the other characterset, tell the database that is what you use (both the database and the application). Then you could theoretically keep track of where (column or row) you actually inserts using one or the other characterset. You would however get ordering and other database functionallity only according to one set, so it is unlikely that its usefull. The only real solution in to use Unicode, but I don't think Informix support that yet on other than the Universal Server. Even there you will probably need a datablade to implement that support. PS.: The whole world should write their languages in 7 bit ascii. That is not hard and would benefit everyone tremendously. (There is a 7 bit ascii "standard" way of writing German.) Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org