1. Implementing Siebel Business Applications on DB2 for z/OS
  2. Considerations in Choosing the Database CCSID

Considerations in Choosing the Database CCSID

The current Siebel CRM release supports ASCII- and EBCDIC-based coded character set IDs (CCSIDs) for all versions of DB2 for z/OS, and Unicode character set IDs on all versions of DB2 for z/OS, New Function Mode and later releases. The database CCSID you use determines a number of factors, for example, the sort order used in list applets.

Review Siebel CRM Update Guide and Release Notes on My Oracle Support for information about known restrictions; for example, the following features are not supported on databases with EBCDIC code pages:

  • Web Client migration

  • Siebel Data Warehouse

  • Siebel Dun and Bradstreet server components

You must run development databases with ASCII or Unicode code pages, because databases with EBCDIC code pages do not support the following procedures in a development environment upgrade:

  • Merging prior configuration changes into a new custom configuration repository (for upgrades only)

  • Publishing a new Siebel Runtime Repository

You can use an ASCII-, an EBCDIC-, or a Unicode-based CCSID to create your Siebel Schema, but, if you mainly use single-byte character sets, it is recommended that you use ASCII or EBCDIC CCSIDs to minimize storage space requirements. Review the following recommendations:

  • Use an ASCII-based encoding scheme to reduce the overhead required for character conversion. Character conversion is performed by Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA), between the database and the midtier ASCII servers.

  • Use a Unicode-based encoding scheme if you require a character set that includes many characters that do not fit well in the ASCII or EBCDIC character set, for example, double-byte character sets for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters.

You can partition table spaces on a database with either an ASCII, an EBCDIC or a Unicode code page, so that limit keys reflect the sort sequence difference between ASCII, EBCDIC and Unicode. For more information, see Configuring the Siebel Database Layout.