Nulls and Binary zeros

I am in the process of moving a DB2 application to Informix 7.12 on HP UNIX 10.01 platform. In DB2(IBM MVS), the tables have each data element defined as NOT NULL. The actual data contains binary zeros (hex x'00') in several of the fields. I defined the Informix tables also with NOT NULL, but when attempting to load via dbaccess: load from filename insert into tablename I am receiving the error cannot load null into NOT NULL field. I have removed the NOT NULL constaint from the tables for now to allow me to load the data. Binary zeros has a specific meaning to the application. How can I (or can I) load binary zeros into a field defined as NOT NULL? My question? Is the presence of binary zeros a NULL or just the representation of a NULL value? MVS DB2 allows this without error. The presence of LOW VALUES is a standard MVS COBOL programming method. Can any UNIX and/or relational DB expert solve this problem or is it a problem? Wes Loftis Thanks in advance. Wes Loftis