Recommended character sets and collations

While SQL Anywhere recognizes the names of hundreds of character sets, code pages, encodings and collations, this section provides listings of those that are recommended for use with Windows and Unix platforms, depending on the language in use.

You can use the dbinit -le option to obtain a list of all of the available character set encodings for a SQL Anywhere database. See Initialization utility (dbinit).

Note

For languages not found in the tables below, the UTF-8 encoding should be used with collations UCA or UTF8BIN.

Windows platforms
Language Windows Code Page Character set label Collation Alternate collation
Arabic 1256 Windows-1256 1256ARA
Central and Eastern European 1250 Windows-1250 1250LATIN2
Danish 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Dutch 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
English 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Finnish 1252 Windows-1252 1252SWEFIN
French 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
German 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Greek 1253 Windows-1253 1253ELL
Hebrew 1253 Windows-1253 1255HEB
Italian 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Japanese 932 Windows-31J 932JPN
Korean 949 IBM949 949KOR
Lithuanian 1257 Windows-1257 1257LIT
Norwegian 1252 Windows-1252 1252NOR
Polish 1250 Windows-1250 1250POL
Portuguese 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Russian 1251 Windows-1251 1251CYR
Simplified Chinese 936 GBK 936ZHO
Spanish 1252 Windows-1252 1252SPA
Swedish 1252 Windows-1252 1252SWEFIN
Thai 874 TIS-620 874THAIBIN
Traditional Chinese - Hong Kong 950 Big5-HKSCS 950ZHO_HK
Traditional Chinese - Taiwan 950 Big5 950ZHO_TW
Turkish 1254 Windows-1254 1254TRK 1254TRKALT
Ukrainian 1251 Windows-1251 1251CYR
Western European 1252 Windows-1252 1252LATIN1
Unix platforms
Language Character set label Collation Alternate collation
Arabic ISO_8859-6:1987 UCA
Central and Eastern European ISO_8859-2:1987 UCA
Danish ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Dutch ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
English ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Finnish ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
French ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
German ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Greek ISO_8859-7:1987 UCA
Hebrew ISO_8859-8:1988 UCA
Italian ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Japanese EUC-JP1 EUC_JAPAN
Korean EUC-KR EUC_KOREA
Lithuanian (use UTF-8) UCA or UTF8BIN
Norwegian ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Polish ISO_8859-2:1987 UCA
Portuguese ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Russian ISO_8859-5:1988 UCA
Simplified Chinese GB2312 EUC_CHINA
Spanish ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Swedish ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1
Thai (use UTF-8) UCA or UTF8BIN
Traditional Chinese - Hong Kong Big5-HKSCS 950ZHO_HK 950TWN
Traditional Chinese - Taiwan EUC-TW EUC_TAIWAN
Traditional Chinese - Taiwan Big5 950ZHO_TW
Turkish ISO_8859-9:1989 920TRK
Ukrainian ISO_8859-5:1988 UCA
Western European ISO-8859-15 ISO9LATIN1 ISO1LATIN1

1 EUC-JP is an alternate label for the SQL Anywhere label Extended_UNIX_Code_Packed_Format_for_Japanese.