Linux and UNIX distributions and code pages

Newer versions of Linux® distributions and UNIX operating systems (such as AIX®) are starting to use Unicode (UTF-8) as the default code page for many of their locales.

If the operating system is upgraded on a system and the upgrade includes this change in the default code page, then:

Applications that used to run might fail because the default active code page is modified.
Any new database created after the operating system upgrade is created using the Unicode code page unless a code page is explicitly specified when creating a database. All existing databases retain their original code page settings; that is, the setting established during database creation.

To determine the active code page the system is running on Linux, run:

   locale

Not all of the information displayed from running this command is important or relevant, however the Db2® database manager uses the following items in the order presented to determine the active code page:

LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LANG

To determine which code page a database is using, run:

   db2 get db cfg for database_name

and check the value for the Database code page parameter.