RE: Unicode and sybase

Sourav.

>Can anyone please tell me -
>
>1. From which version onwards Sybase database
>server supports Unicode ?
>
>2. Whether it internally stores all strings in
>Unicode like Oracle ?
>
>3. Whether it provides  specific datatypes
>(like nchar, nvarchar in Oracle) to support
>multibute characters ?
>
>Regards,
>Sourav

I've actually done some testing with Sybase and its
Unicode support. It has the UNIVARCHAR and UNICHAR
column datatypes that correctly store Unicode data.
This was as UTF-16 or UCS-2 or "wide" Unicode for
all practical purposes. By the way, I was accessing
the database through a JDBC driver that Sybase provides.
When submitting Unicode values it wasn't necessary
to denote these like is required via the "N" prefix
for Microsoft SQL Server. (I was checking the JDBC
access - and thus Unicode - support to this as well.)

I was using ASE 12.5 but I think some Unicode support
was available prior to this. I don't think it was
well-documented (nor tested?) though and it was then
doing UTF-8 (like Oracle) I believe. I'd be surprised
if they didn't do internal processing in Unicode but
this I don't know. From what I recall there was some
documentation on this in the evaulation download of
Sybase that I installed.

/Chris

Chris Cowperthwait
Sr. Technical Consultant
Professional Services
GlobalSight Corporation
E: chris@globalsight.com
P: (720) 622-4005
F: (720) 622-4001
M: (303) 349-0119

Received on Thursday, 27 September 2001 11:06:20 UTC