CCSID

CCSID is an abbreviation used by IBM to mean "Coded Character Set Identifier". It is a 16-bit number that represents a specific encoding of a specific code page. For example, Unicode is a code page that has several encoding forms, like UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32.

What Is the Difference between a Code Page and a CCSID?

The terms code page and CCSID are often used interchangeably even though they are not synonymous. A code page may be only part of what makes up a CCSID. The following definitions help to illustrate this point, from glyph to CCSID and everything in between.

A glyph is the actual physical pattern of pixels or ink that shows up on a display or printout.

A character is a concept that covers all glyphs associated with a certain symbol. For instance, "F", "F", "F", "F", "F", and "F" are all different glyphs, but use the same character. The various modifiers (bold, italic, underline, color, and font) do not change the F's essential F-ness.

A character set contains the characters necessary to allow a particular human to carry on a meaningful interaction with the computer. This level is the first one to separate characters into various alphabets (Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and so on) or ideographic groups (Chinese, Korean, and so on).

A code page represents a particular assignment of code point values to glyphs. The code point is the logical representation of the computer's internal byte representation of that character. Many characters are represented by different code points in different code pages. All code points in a code page contain the same number of bytes. Certain character sets can be adequately represented with single-byte code pages (256 characters), but many require more than that. Examples include JIS X 0208 and Unicode.

An encoding scheme is the byte format of a code page. It maps code point values to byte values in a computer. For example, UTF-8 and UTF-16BE are two encodings of the same Unicode code page. In IBM's CDRA, this is typically represented with an ESID (Encoding Scheme IDentifier). EUC and ISO-2022 are other examples of encoding schemes.

A coded character set identifier (CCSID) contains all of the information necessary to assign and preserve the meaning and rendering of characters through various stages of processing and interchange. This information always includes at least one code page, but may include multiple code pages of differing byte-lengths. The CCSID also has an associated encoding scheme that governs how various code points are to be handled. This mechanism allows a program to recognize bidirectional orientation, character shaping (mainly of Arabic characters), and other complex encoding information.

Examples

The following examples show how some CCSIDs are made up of other CCSIDs.

CCSID 932

Character Set	Code Page	CCSID	Encoding Scheme
1122	897	897	SBCS
370	301	301	DBCS

CCSID 942

Character Set	Code Page	CCSID	Encoding Scheme
1172	1041	1041	SBCS
370	301	301	DBCS

CCSID 5028

Character Set	Code Page	CCSID	Encoding Scheme
1170	897	4993	SBCS
370	301	301	DBCS

All three of these variant Shift-JIS CCSIDs are MBCS (multi-byte character sets). The SBCS (single byte character set) portion of each CCSID is different. The DBCS portion is the same across each CCSID. CCSID 5028 uses an updated code page 897 called CCSID 4993. CCSID 932 uses the original code page 897, which is CCSID 897. CCSID 942 uses a different SBCS from the other 2 CCSIDs, which is 1041.

Also notice how CCSID 5028 and 4993 are different by 4096 (1000 in hexadecimal) from the predecessor CCSID with the same code page identifier. This is a common way that CDRA denotes an upgraded CCSID.

There are a few reasons for this amount of complexity.

• Many of the CCSIDs are used in IBM databases, like DB2, where a database field only supports an SBCS, DBCS or MBCS string. CCSIDs allow programs to differentiate between which one is being used.
• When characters are added or replaced, like the Euro currency sign introduction, you can know whether the stored strings support or do not support those character additions because a different CCSID is being used. This versioning is important for the integrity of the data.
• Increases reuse of resources among similar CCSIDs ^[1]

Reference

• IBM CDRA (Character Data Representation Architecture) glossary of terms
• IBM Globalization Terminology

1. ^ http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/cdra/chapter7.jsp

External links

• Complete description of IBM CDRA (Character Data Representation Architecture) - This includes a more detailed description of the architecture surrounding CCSIDs.
• IBM's complete list of CCSIDs and other various related identifiers
• List of CCSIDs supported on the IBM System i computer