How can I change my code set for the FTP data connection?

Translating data on the data connection requires specifying two code pages. This is because the z/OS FTP server and client message catalogues are encoded using EBCDIC.

If no action is taken to specify a particular pair of code sets to be used in translation, FTP will assume that network data is 7-bit ASCII, and that it is to be translated to EBCDIC 1047. If the network data truly is 7-bit ASCII, this implementation works as expected. However, if the network data is not 7-bit ASCII, this will be sufficient for most characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.), but there are some characters which this default does not handle properly.

In cases where translation other than the 7-bit default is needed, FTP users must intervene and explicitly tell FTP what code set translation should be used.

Using ICONV, the user only has to know what two code sets are to be used in the translation.

only one of four commands is needed, and the user only has to know what two code sets are to be used in the translation. Conveniently, the four commands are actually the SITE/LOCSITE SBDATACONN/MBDATACONN commands already discussed. However, instead of specifying the translation tables to be used, the two code sets are indicated. The commands are as follows:

SITE ENCODING=SBCS SBDATACONN=(file_system_codeset, network_codeset)

LOCSITE ENCODING=SBCS SBDATACONN=(file_system_codeset, network_codeset)

SITE ENCODING=MBCS MBDATACONN=(file_system_codeset, network_codeset)

LOCSITE ENCODING=MBCS MBDATACONN=(file_system_codeset, network_codeset)

In these commands, the file_system_codeset is the code set of the data as it resides (or will reside) on the disk. The network_codeset is the code set in which the data will be transferred. As noted previously, the ENCODING and SBDATACONN statements can be specified in the FTP.DATA files of both the client and server if these parameters are to be used by default. Similarly, the MBDATACONN can be configured here as well.