Connection strings present a special case for character set
translation.
The connection string is parsed by the client library, to locate or start a
database server as follows:
- It is broken down into its keyword = value components. This
can be done independently of character set, as
long as you do not use the curly braces {} around
CommLinks parameters. Instead, use the recommended
parentheses (). Curly braces are valid following
bytes (bytes other than the first byte) in some
multibyte character sets.
- The server is located, its name is interpreted according to the character set of
the client machine. For the Windows operating
systems, the ANSI character set is used. Extended
characters can be used unless they cause character
set conversion issues between client and server
machine.
For maximum
compatibility among different machines, use server
names that use alphabetic ASCII characters 1 to
127 (or 33 to 126) and the underscore, without any
punctuation characters. Server names are truncated
at 40 characters.
- The DatabaseName (DBN) or DatabaseFile (DBF) parameter is interpreted in the
database server character set.
- Once the database is located, the remaining connection parameters are
interpreted according to the database character
set.