There is a registry entry under the SNA OLE DB\Client key that affects whether binary data is considered as character data and is converted based on the Host CCSID setting. This BinAsChar key has a REG_SZ value. If BinAsChar has a value of "0" or this registry entry does not exist, binary data is not treated as character (binary data is not affected by the Host CCSID setting). If the value in the BinAsChar registry setting is nonzero, then binary data will be converted based on the Host CCSID setting.
This registry setting should be configured with the SNA OLE DB Management Console (MMC) snap-in. The SNA OLE DB MMC snap-in is designed to run on Windows 95 and Windows NT. On Windows NT, the snap-in respects the Windows NT security hierarchy, where only privileged users can read and write to some areas of the system registry. To prevent general users from modifying the data sources and HCD files on Windows NT, the SNA OLE DB Management snap-in can only be run by users that have administrative privileges on the local computer.