The encoding of XML documents

XML documents that you parse using XML PARSE statements must be encoded, and XML documents that you create using XML GENERATE statements are encoded, as follows:

• Documents in national data items: in Unicode UTF-16 in big-endian format
• Documents in native alphanumeric data items: in Unicode UTF-8 or a single-byte ASCII code page that is supported by International Components for Unicode (ICU) conversion libraries

  A native alphanumeric data item is a category alphanumeric data item that is compiled with the CHAR(NATIVE) compiler option in effect or whose data description entry contains the NATIVE phrase.

• Documents in host alphanumeric data items: in a single-byte EBCDIC code page that is supported by ICU conversion libraries

  A host alphanumeric data item is a category alphanumeric data item that is compiled with the CHAR(EBCDIC) compiler option in effect and whose data description entry does not contain the NATIVE phrase.

The encodings supported by the ICU conversion libraries are documented in the related reference about the ICU converter explorer.