The figure in this topic shows a multilingual single system with German as the primary language and English and French as secondary languages. All users enter data into the same database file.
On this multilingual system, all users are entering character data into a single file with CCSID 00273 (German), and character data entered from the English and French display stations is being mapped into the German file.
To preserve correct mapping, fields defined as character fields should be actual character fields. If the fields contain application development values (for example, control characters or fields that are not used as real character fields), the fields either should be specified as hexadecimal fields or assigned a CCSID value of 65535.
Using CCSIDs, characters that cannot be converted between different code pages are replaced with a substitution code. If you are using a user-defined data stream (UDDS) to format and lay out your display (instead of using DDS), you might get substitution codes returned after the system reads and inserts that data in your user-defined data stream. Substitution codes might cause unpredictable results on the display.