Programming Guide - Actian

How You Can Work with Text StringsHow You Can Determine If a Database is Unicode-enabledFor Ingres, a database is Unicode-enabled when you use either the -i or -noption when you create the database. You can determine whether a databaseis Unicode-enabled by issuing the following query:SELECTFROMWHEREcap_valueiidbcapabilitiescap_capability = 'NATIONAL_CHARACTER_SET'If the value of cap_value is 'N', then the database is not Unicode-enabled. Ifthe value of cap_value is 'Y', then the database is Unicode-enabled.If the database is Unicode-enabled, the system default catalog used to storeStringObjects, ii_stored_strings, cannot be used to save and retrieve data. Theuser always must supply a predefined table as a parameter on theInsertIntoDB method of the StringObject.Important! For Unicode-enabled databases, we strongly recommend usingNormalization Form C (NFC) normalization format databases (-i option with thecreatedb command) because OpenROAD uses NFC internally when coercingbetween Unicode and non-Unicode data.You can determine the normalization form in the database by issuing a call todbmsinfo():SELECT dbmsinfo('unicode_normalization')The select statement will return blank if the database does not supportUnicode or if the database does not perform normalization. It will return thevalue 'NFC' if the database supports the NFC normalization form, and returnsthe value 'NFD' if the database supports the NFD normalization form.For more information on dbmsinfo(), see the Ingres SQL Reference Guide.Working with Images and Text Strings 293