Locale

A locale defines your cultural environment. Specifying the correct locale ensures that Db2 handles case conversions and sorts according to the rules for a particular language.

You can set the locale for your subsystem by using the CURRENT LOCALE LC_CTYPE special register. Alternatively, you can specify a locale when you perform specific functions that depend on locale, such as UPPER and LOWER.

Depending on the encoding scheme of the data, use one of the following locale formats:

LE locales
Specify this locale format for EBCDIC data.

An LE locale consists of two components: the first component represents a specific language and country, and the second component is a CCSID. For example, in the locale Fr_CA.IBM®-1047, Fr_CA represents the language and country (French Canadian), and IBM-1047 is the associated CCSID.

When you specify an LE locale to Db2 for z/OS®, specify only the first component, which is the language and country. Db2 appends "IBM-" and the CCSID.

The following table shows some example LE locales that you can specify to Db2.

Table 1. Examples of LE locales that you can specify
Locale Language Country
En_US English United States
De_CH German Switzerland
De_DE German Germany
Fr_CA French Canada
It_IT Italian Italy
Ja_JP Japanese Japan

For a complete list of supported LE locales, see Compiled locales (LE locales).

z/OS Unicode Services
Specify one of the following z/OS Unicode Services locale formats for ASCII and Unicode data.
Locale format for case conversion services
Use this format when you need a locale to affect how data is converted to uppercase and lowercase, such as in the UPPER and LOWER functions.

The locale format for case conversion is Lxx_Ryy where:

Lxx
Language
Ryy
Region

You can use any of the locale values that are supported by z/OS Unicode Services for CUNBAPRM_Locale (31-bit) or CUN4BAPR_Locale (64-bit). The following table lists some example locale values for case conversion services.

Table 2. Example locale values for the case conversion services of z/OS Unicode Services
Locale value Language Region
Cs_CZ Czech Czech Republic
De_DE German Germany
En_US English United States
En_GB English Great Britain
Es_MX Spanish Mexico
Fr_FR French France
Ja_JP Japanese Japan
Sv_SE Swedish Sweden

For a complete list of supported locales for case conversion services, see Locales supported for case service .

Locale format for collation conversion services
Use this format when you need a locale to affect how the data is sorted.

The collation locale format is Lxx_Ryy_Vzz where:

Lxx
Language
Ryy
Region
Vzz
Variant

You can use any of the locale values that are supported by z/OS Unicode Services for CUNBOPRM_Collation_Keyword/CUN4BOPR_Collation_Keyword The following table lists some example locale values for collation

Table 3. Example locale values for collation conversions in z/OS Unicode Services
Locale value Language Region Variant
LCS_RCZ Czech Czech Republic None
LDE_RDE German Germany None
LDE_RDE_PREEURO German Germany Pre Euro support
LEN English None None
LEN_RGB English Great Britain None
LES_RMX Spanish Mexico None
LFR_RFR French France None
LJA Japanese None None
LSV Swedish None None

For a complete list of supported locales for collation conversion services, see Locales supported for collation .