The DATA IS...ENDIAN clause indicates the endianness of data whose byte order may vary depending on the platform that generated the data file. Fields of the following types are affected by this clause:
INTEGER
UNSIGNED INTEGER
FLOAT
BINARY_FLOAT
DOUBLE
BINARY_DOUBLE
VARCHAR (numeric count only)
VARRAW (numeric count only)
Any character data type in the UTF16 character set
Any string specified by RECORDS DELIMITED BY string and in the UTF16 character set
Windows-based platforms generate little-endian data. Big-endian platforms include Sun Solaris and IBM MVS. If the DATA IS...ENDIAN clause is not specified, then the data is assumed to have the same endianness as the platform where the access driver is running. UTF-16 data files may have a mark at the beginning of the file indicating the endianness of the data. This mark will override the DATA IS...ENDIAN clause.