Translating Between ANSI and EBCDIC (Magic xpa 3.x)

IBM i uses the EBCDIC character set instead of the ANSI character set used for Windows. Therefore, when you run Magic xpa for IBM i applications in a specific language, you need to define or create appropriate ANSI to EBCDIC translation tables.

To translate between ANSI and EBCDID, Magic xpa for IBM i supplies two kinds of language translation tables, AS2EB.XXX and ACS400.XXX, where XXX represents a specific language, such as ENG for English or GER for German. These files are automatically copied to your PC during the client installation in accordance with the language settings defined in your Windows operating system. If no language settings are defined, Magic xpa uses the default English translation tables, AS2EB.ENG and ACS400.ENG.

To generate the language translation tables, Magic xpa for IBM i uses:

• The PC Client’s ANSI Code Page, which can be found using the WINKDB.EXE utility and is supplied by MSE upon request.

• The IBM i EBCDIC Code Page, which can be found using the IBM i command, DSPSYSVAL QCHRID. This is the global system Code Page. The job Code Page can be defined by using: WRKJOB OPTION(*DFNA)

The AS2EB.XXX table contains 32 rows and 8 columns, where each HEX value represents an ANSI value that is translated to EBCDIC by the Magic xpa for IBM i Client when communicating with IBM i.

The ACS400.XXX table contains the actual sort sequence of your data on the IBM i server. Since no default value is provided, the ACS400.XXX keyword must be specified in the DBMS Properties dialog box, as explained in the Adjusting the Sort Sequence for IBM i section.