Enabling and disabling euro symbol support

Db2® provides support for the euro currency symbol.

The euro symbol has been added to numerous code pages. Microsoft ANSI code pages have been modified to include the euro currency symbol in position X'80'. Code page 850 has been modified to replace the character DOTLESS I (found at position X'D5') with the euro currency symbol. Db2 internal code page conversion routines use these revised code page definitions as the default to provide euro symbol support.

However, if you want to use the non-euro definitions of the code page conversion tables, you can disable the euro-symbol support after installation is complete.

Before you begin

For replacing existing external code page conversion table files, you may want to back up the current files before copying the non-euro versions over them. The files are located in the directory sqllib/conv/. On UNIX, sqllib/conv/ is linked to the install path of the Db2 database system.

Procedure

To disable euro-symbol support:

  1. Stop the Db2 instance.
  2. Download the appropriate conversion table files, in binary.
    • For big-endian platforms, obtain the files from ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/db2/info/vr8/conv/BigEndian/. This ftp server is anonymous, so if you are connecting via the command line, log in as user "anonymous" and use your email address as your password. After logging in, change to the conversion tables directory: 
      cd ps/products/db2/info/vr8/conv/BigEndian/
    • For little-endian platforms from ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/db2/info/vr8/conv/LittleEndian/. This ftp server is anonymous, so if you are connecting via the command line, log in as user "anonymous" and use your email address as your password. After logging in, change to the conversion tables directory: 
      cd ps/products/db2/info/vr8/conv/LittleEndian
  3. Copy the files to your sqllib/conv/ directory.
  4. Restart the Db2 instance.

What to do next

Code pages 819 and 1047

For code pages 819 (ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 ASCII) and 1047 (Latin 1 Open System EBCDIC), the euro replacement code pages, 923 (ISO 8859-15 Latin 9 ASCII) and 924 (Latin 9 Open System EBCDIC), contain not just the euro symbol but also several new characters. Db2 continues to use the old (non-euro) definitions of these two code pages and conversion tables, namely 819 and 1047, by default. There are two ways to activate the new 923/924 code page and the associated conversion tables:

  • Create a new database that uses the new code page. For example, 
    DB2 CREATE DATABASE dbname USING CODESET ISO8859-15 TERRITORY US
  • Copy the 923 or 924 conversion table files from the sqllib/conv/alt/ directory to the sqllib/conv/ directory and rename them to 819 or 1047, respectively.
    Note: This method does not work for IBM® Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ client applications.