Changing the Default Character Set for Servers

You can select any character set as the default on SAP ASE, including character sets that are not the platform default character sets.

Keep these guidelines in mind when selecting a new default character set:

To avoid conversion errors or overhead, determine the default character set based on the character set used by your clients.

For example, if most of your clients use ISO 8859-1, you can minimize the amount of data conversion by specifying ISO 8859-1.
If your server is operating in a heterogeneous environment, choose a character set that works with all the character sets needed. Often, this is Unicode (UTF-8).

Warning! Make all changes to the default character set and sort order for a new SAP ASE before creating any user databases or making any changes to the SAP ASE-supplied databases. Changing the character set and sort order after data or data structures have been added to SAP ASE can cause incorrect behavior. To change the character set or sort order after you have added data, see the System Administration Guide: Volume 1.