Create Database

Databases created on PCs or database servers store data in ANSI. To use these databases, with EBCDIC enabled products such as IMS Option and CICS Option, you must have a database created with an alternate collating sequence.

Warning: If you use any of the IBM tools to create the database, all data will be returned to your application in ANSI collating sequence. IBM does provide some examples of how to create databases with alternate collating sequences but the EBCDIC to ANSI translation that IBM uses may be different from the translation used in Mainframe Express. Therefore it is very important that you use the Create Database tool to create the database.

Create Database tool

To display the Create Database tool (see Figure 4-1) click HCO > Create Database on the Tools menu.

The Toolbar

The following list shows the buttons in the toolbar and the functions that they invoke:

Button	Function
	Run the Create Database command. This command takes quite a while to complete.
	Display the online HCO User's Guide, which is a hypertext file that describes how the Create Database tool works.

The Menu Bar

The menu bar is an alternate way of invoking Create Database functions. The menu bar is composed of three menus: Database, Options and Help.

The Database Menu

The Database menu is used to either run a command or to exit the tool. You can also display this menu by right-clicking in the Create Database window (see Figure 4-1).

Menu Option	Function
Create DB	Run the Create Database command. This command takes quite a while to complete.
Exit	Exit Create Database tool

The Options Menu

The Options menu enables you to control specific options to be used when creating a database. These options can be pre-defined. See the chapter Setting INI Options for more details. The settings depend on your current environment and what you have set as defaults.

Menu Option	Function
Codepage - Mainframe Express	If checked, the current Mainframe Express codeset is used to define ANSI to EBCDIC collating sequence when you create a database. This is the preferred setting otherwise you may run into codepage conversion issues.
Codepage - Select	If checked, you have selected a pre-defined collating sequence. The Select Code page window is displayed each time you check this option.
Display log	If checked, the log file is displayed after the Create Database command has completed
Database - Local	If checked, you create a database on your local machine

Entry Fields

Regardless of where you are creating a database, you have to provide the following information in the entry fields on the Create Database window before you can run any command:

Entry Field	Data
Database	The name of the database (eight characters maximum, must start with either a letter, $, # or @)
Log File	The name of the log file to write messages to. This field is pre-set using configuration file. See the chapter Setting INI Options for more details.
Drive	The logical disk drive where you want the database to be installed. If you set the value to DEFAULT, the database is created using the default database path DFTDBPATH Default Database Path. See IBM DB2 Command Reference manual for more details. This field is pre-set using the configuration file.