When information is transferred between different environments (such as Intel^® [Windows^®], IEEE [Linux^® and UNIX^® operating systems], zSeries^® [VM, VSE, z/OS], System i™ [OS/400]), numeric data types (such as decimal, integer, floating point) might need to be converted. This conversion can affect performance.

The CPU cost of single-byte character data conversion is generally less than that of numeric data conversion (where data conversion is required).

The data conversion cost of DATE/TIME/TIMESTAMP is almost the same as that of single-byte CHAR. FLOATING point data conversion costs the most. The application designer might want to take advantage of these facts when designing an application based on DB2 Connect™.

If a database table has a column defined 'FOR BIT DATA', the character data being transferred between the application and the database does not require any data conversion. This can be used when you are archiving data on the host or System i database server.

Parent topic: DB2 Connect tuning