Unicode conversion support

Some platforms support the conversion of user data to or from Unicode encoding. The two forms of Unicode encoding supported are UCS-2 (CCSIDs 1200, 13488, and 17584) and UTF-8 (CCSID 1208).

The term UCS-2 is often used interchangeably but incorrectly with UTF-16. UCS-2 is a fixed-width encoding where each character occupies 2 bytes. UTF-16 is variable-width encoding that is a superset of UCS-2. In addition to the 2-byte UCS-2 characters, UTF-16 contains characters, known as surrogate pairs, that are 4 bytes in length. WebSphere MQ does not support surrogate pairs. The support for UTF-16 and UTF-8 in WebSphere MQ is therefore limited to those Unicode characters that can be encoded in UCS-2.
Note: WebSphere® MQ does not support UCS-2 queue manager CCSIDs so message header data cannot be encoded in UCS-2.

WebSphere MQ AIX support for Unicode

On WebSphere MQ for AIX® conversion to and from Unicode CCSIDs is supported for the CCSIDs in the following table.

WebSphere MQ HP-UX support for Unicode

On WebSphere MQ for HP-UX conversion to and from Unicode CCSIDs is supported for the CCSIDs listed in the following table.

WebSphere MQ for Windows, Solaris, and Linux support for Unicode

On WebSphere MQ for Windows, WebSphere MQ for Solaris, and WebSphere MQ for Linux® conversion to, and from, Unicode CCSIDs is supported for the CCSIDs in the following table.

IBM i support for Unicode

For details on UNICODE support refer to the appropriate IBM® i publication relating to your operating system.

WebSphere MQ for z/OS support for Unicode

On WebSphere MQ for z/OS® conversion to and from the Unicode CCSIDs is supported for the following CCSIDs: