You can configure the Integration Service to run sessions in either ASCII or Unicode data movement mode.

The following table describes target character sets supported by each data movement mode in PowerCenter:

You can work with targets that use multibyte character sets with PowerCenter. You can choose a code page that you want the Integration Service to use for relational objects and flat files. You specify code pages for relational objects when you configure database connections in the Workflow Manager. The code page for a database connection used as a target must be a superset of the source code page.

When you change the database connection code page to one that is not two-way compatible with the old code page, the Workflow Manager generates a warning and invalidates all sessions that use that database connection.

Code pages you select for a file represent the code page of the

data

contained in these files. If you are working with flat files, you can also specify delimiters and null characters supported by the code page you have specified for the file.

Target code pages must be a superset of the source code page.

However, if you configure the Integration Service and Client for code page relaxation, you can select any code page supported by PowerCenter for the target database connection. When using code page relaxation, select compatible code pages for the source and target data to prevent data inconsistencies.

If the target contains multibyte character data, configure the Integration Service to run in Unicode mode. When the Integration Service runs a session in Unicode mode, it uses the database code page to translate data.

If the target contains only single-byte characters, configure the Integration Service to run in ASCII mode. When the Integration Service runs a session in ASCII mode, it does not validate code pages.