Activating Unicode management on an AS/400 IBMi source

If your data is of unicode-type (this is the case for specific Enterprise Resource Planning software), you need to activate its management and configure the related options.

1. Make sure the last versions of AS/400 IBMi source and NT Server target are installed. To perform an update:
   • on an AS/400 IBMi source: run SETUPAS U <user> <address ip IBMi> <password> or directly launch setupas.exe and follow Installing the source and target engines on AS/400 IBMi, iSeries, Power i.
   • on an NT Server target: follow Installing the Manager GUI and its modules on Windows NT Server.
2. Stop and restart any distribution of the AS/400 IBMi source. Select a source, go to Distribute and right-click to access its Properties. In the Activity tab, click the Start button.
   

   This enables the creation of Unicode variable in the DD_YSRDATA/DD_CFG data area. To read the data area and check the variable was created and set to 0, enter DSPDTAARA DD_USRDATA/DD_CFG command.

   
3. On the AS/400 IBMi machine, in DD_USRDATA/DD_CFG data area, you need to set the Unicode variable to 1. It activates the Unicode management on the AS/400 IBMi source machine.
   • To update the variable value, use CHGDTAARA DTAARA(DD_USRDATA/DD_CFG (XXX1)) VALUE('1') command (XXX is the position of the 0|1 value of Unicode variable).
   • To read the data area and check the variable update, use DSPDTAARA DD_USRDATA/DD_CFG command.
   
4. In all models of AS/400 IBMi source, you need to update the table structures that have a GRAPHIC or NCHAR field. For this operation, go to the Manager and click Force the change of structure button that is available in two different ways.
   • Either go to the Tables tab and right-click on a table in a model, then click Force the change of structure:
   
   • Or go to the List tab, select various tables and right-click to access the menu, then click Force the structure changes:
   
5. In case of AS/400 IBMi target, go to the distribution Properties and change the Access Mode to Auto. For more details, see Table options.
6. Restart the distributions that were updated.
   Select a source, go to Distribute and right-click to access its Properties. In the Activity tab, click the Start button.