Character Sets and Encodings

Because Identity Manager is a Java application that generally reads and writes character data rather than bytes, it does not restrict which encoding the database uses.

Identity Manager only requires that the data is sent and returned correctly. For example, the data does not become corrupted when written or reread. Use an encoding that supports multi-byte characters and is appropriate for the customer’s data. Generally, UTF-8 encoding is sufficient, but enterprises with a large number of true multi-byte characters, such as Asian or Arabic, might prefer UTF-16.

Most database administrators prefer to use an encoding that supports multi-byte characters because of the following:

• Their deployments often grow to support international characters.

• Their end users cut-and-paste from a Microsoft application’s text containing characters that look like ASCII but are actually multi-byte, such as em dashes (—).