.NET UI clients are fully Unicode compliant; a user logged in through the .NET UI can access any domain, regardless of its defined code page.

Character clients do not support Unicode and must log in to a domain with a compatible code page, as defined in Domain Create. This is to prevent the possibility of data corruption when characters cannot be interpreted correctly. Once logged in through the character UI, users are limited in which domains that they can switch to.

However, some domain switching can happen behind the scenes when processes such as Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) are being used. In a Unicode database, these processes should be run from batch to prevent code page issues.

If your implementation includes a Unicode database and you have some users executing functions from character clients, you should be aware of the following restrictions.

When you create a site in one domain, connection records for that site are optionally created in other domains in the database. This is to support cross-domain features such as Distributed Requirements Planning (DRP).

If any of the domains in the database have incompatible code pages, creating site connection records is not possible from the character UI. If you need to create these records, you must use Site Maintenance (1.1.13) from the .NET UI.

If you routinely run batch jobs across multiple domains in a Unicode database, you should set up scripts with the correct Unicode startup parameters to avoid code page issues. See Invoke Batch Processing from CIM.

DRP is one of the areas where the system may need to change to a different domain based on the sourcing relationships for items that you have set up. If you have set up relationships between sites in domains that have incompatible code pages, this switching cannot be done when DRP is run from a character client. This is true of stand-alone DRP using programs on 12.13, or running Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) when the DRP/MRP Combined field is selected in DRP Control (12.13.24).

If the system detects that the domains are incompatible, an error is generated and DRP will not complete its execution.

To avoid errors, run DRP or MRP in batch mode with a Unicode database; for example, use the following parameters with your Progress batch command to use the UTF-8 code page:

For details on setting up the batch job, see Invoke Batch Processing from CIM.