Informatica can process data in different languages. Some languages require single-byte data, while other languages require multibyte data. To process data correctly in Informatica, you must set up the following items:
Locale. Informatica requires that the locale settings on machines that access Informatica applications are compatible with code pages in the domain. You may need to change the locale settings. The locale specifies the language, territory, encoding of character set, and collation order.
Data movement mode. The PowerCenter Integration Service can process single-byte or multibyte data and write it to targets. Use the ASCII data movement mode to process single-byte data. Use the Unicode data movement mode for multibyte data.
Code pages. Code pages contain the encoding to specify characters in a set of one or more languages. You select a code page based on the type of character data you want to process. To ensure accurate data movement, you must ensure compatibility among code pages for Informatica and environment components. You use code pages to distinguish between US-ASCII (7-bit ASCII), ISO 8859-1 (8-bit ASCII), and multibyte characters.
To ensure data passes accurately through your environment, the following components must work together:
Domain configuration database code page
Administrator tool locale settings and code page
PowerCenter Integration Service data movement mode
Code page for each PowerCenter Integration Service process
PowerCenter Client code page
PowerCenter repository code page
Source and target database code pages
Metadata Manager repository code page
You can configure the PowerCenter Integration Service for relaxed code page validation. Relaxed validation removes restrictions on source and target code pages.