SQL Anywhere can perform character set conversion between character sets that represent the same characters, but at different positions in the character set or code page. There needs to be a degree of compatibility between the character sets for this to be possible. For example, character set conversion is possible between EUC-JIS and cp932 character sets, but not between EUC-JIS and cp1252.

SQL Anywhere implements character set conversion using the International Components for Unicode (ICU) open source library, developed and maintained by IBM.

For more information about character set conversion for the purposes of comparing values that are in different data types, see Comparisons between data types.