The integration code page conversion process

The base ClearCase® integration uses the following code page conversion process:

  • Characters are converted between local code page and UTF-8 encoding form, where appropriate. Because performance overhead is negligible, disabling conversion for performance reasons is not encouraged. Code page conversion is only supported in DevOps Code ClearCase 7.0 and later releases. Thus, conversion is ignored by clients running earlier versions of DevOps Code ClearCase. If code page conversion errors occur, they are reported to the user as type error or type fatal, depending on the context as shown in the following example:
    Conversion error for CQWebJava field 'Resultset.Rows' 
    Codepage conversion error: No valid character in output character set. 
    The string is 'French: Les na?fs ?githales h?tifs pondant ? No?l o? il  
    g?le sont 
     s?rs d'?tre d??us et de voir leurs dr?les d'?ufs ab?m?s' 
    The following characters are invalid: 
    U+c3af at 14 
    U+c3a6 at 18 
    U+c3a2 at 29 
    U+c3a0 at 43 
    U+c3ab at 47 
    U+c3b9 at 51 
    U+c3a8 at 57 
    U+c3bb at 67 
    ... (error message truncated) 
    Caller: \\serverA\central\CQCC\../CQCC/CQWebJava.pm Line: 896 

    The error message indicates the context in which the string is being used and the string or strings involved; and uses question mark (?) characters to indicate inconvertible characters. Additional information is provided on each individual character that can not be converted.

  • If code page conversion is not enabled or is not yet supported on the client, the integration performs ASCII checking to filter non-ASCII data in strings. Strings that contain non-ASCII data are treated as code page conversion errors. Similar information is reported to identify the context and string contents. Performance overhead for ASCII checking is negligible. With ASCII checking enabled, the integration prevents transmission of incorrectly encoded data between client and server and minimizes potential data corruption and misrepresentation.
  • The integration can produce large error messages if there are either code page conversion or ASCII check errors. There is a maximum number of lines that are displayed in a conversion error message, after which additional data is truncated. The number of lines is set to 50 by default, but, if your environment requires, the limit can be adjusted to provide less or more information.