Because the DataDirect Driver Manager allows applications to use either UTF-8 or UTF-16 Unicode encoding, applications written in UTF-16 for Windows platforms can also be used on Linux platforms.

The Driver Manager assumes a default of UTF-8 applications; therefore, two things must occur for it to determine that the application is UTF-16:

  • The definition of SQLWCHAR in the ODBC header files must be switched from "char *" to "short *." To do this, the application uses #define SQLWCHARSHORT.
  • The application must set the ODBC environment attribute SQL_ATTR_APP_UNICODE_TYPE to a value of SQL_DD_CP_UTF16, for example:

    rc = SQLSetEnvAttr(*henv, SQL_ATTR_APP_UNICODE_TYPE, (SQLPOINTER)SQL_DD_CP_UTF16, SQL_IS_INTEGER);