Field Size Issues

In some cases, a user might try to enter data into the application and receive an error message saying that the language of the text entered “is not compatible with the database language” or that the length of the text entered “is bigger than the corresponding length allocated in the database.”

Such an error might occur when the character set of the data does not match the character set of the database and cannot be converted without data loss. Or, the error might occur when the data string is too long to fit into the database column.

If you have an existing Siebel deployment and upgrade the database default character set to Unicode (any encoding), then all links to other information technology systems must be examined for compatibility. In many cases, data previously encoded in a traditional codepage will now be larger in terms of bytes, and could overflow the fields that are used for transfers. In such cases, Siebel Unicode data values will be truncated, especially if the data value is large enough to approach the maximum defined size of the field.

You must examine the field sizes in tables used by Siebel EAI or Siebel EIM, in any linking or replication software, and in any extension columns that have been added.

Depending on your existing code page, the languages and specific characters representing your data, and the Unicode encoding that you are migrating to, field sizes might need to be enlarged. In some scenarios, field sizes must be doubled.

Customers can set byte limits on columns in the database. At the user interface level, the input size can be controlled to make sure that this column width is not exceeded. In most cases, there is a 1:1 mapping between bytes and characters.