Sybase 12.4.2 - Manual (Page 356)

Understanding character set translation
336
Using multibyte collations
This section describes how multibyte character sets are handled. The
description applies to the supported collations and to any multibyte custom
collations you may create.
Adaptive Server IQ provides collations using several multibyte character sets.
For a complete listing, see “Understanding collations” on page 328
Understanding collations.
Adaptive Server IQ supports variable-width character sets. In these sets, some
characters are represented by one byte, and some by more than one, to a
maximum of four bytes. The value of the first byte in any character indicates
the number of bytes used for that character, and also indicates whether the
character is a space character, a digit, or an alphabetic (alpha) character.
Adaptive Server IQ does not support fixed-length multibyte character sets such
as 2-byte Unicode (UCS-2) or 4-byte Unicode (UCS-4).
Understanding character set translation
Adaptive Server IQ can carry out character set translation among character sets
that represent the same characters, but at different positions in the character set
or code page. There needs to be a degree of compatibility between the character
sets for this to be possible. For example, character set translation is possible
between EUC-JIS and Shift-JIS character sets, but not between EUC-JIS and
OEM code page 850.
This section describes how Adaptive Server IQ carries out character set
translation. This information is provided for advanced users, such as those who
may be deploying applications or databases in a multi-character-set
environment.
Character translation for database messages
Error and other messages from the database software are held in a language
resource library. Localized versions of this library are provided with localized
versions of Adaptive Server IQ.