An international database has one character set (code page) associated with all its data. This database character set information is stored in the database.

In addition, a database server has an operating character set. The operating character set is used for every character operation such as compare and substring. You can use the Internal Code Page (-cpinternal) international startup parameter to define the operating character set. If you do not use -cpinternal, the default operating character set is iso8859-1.

To view the code page used by a database, check:

  • Messages logged by the broker to the database log file (.lg)
  • The _DbStatus-Codepage field in the Database status VST
  • Output from the PROUTIL -C DESCRIBE utility