Modified field values are not stored in the audit tables in their native data type; they are stored as character strings. In order to ensure consistent formatting of the data, the values are always stored in the database in American format (SESSION:DATE-FORMAT = "mdy" and SESSION:NUMERIC-FORMAT = "American"), regardless of the client settings used to record the audit data.

If the data must be reported in a different format or restored back to its native data type, the session must be temporarily changed to American format, the value converted back to its native data type, and the session restored back to the correct format. This will avoid the occurrence of any type of conversion error.

Additionally, event context stores a delimited list of field values in a character field, so it also uses an American format in all cases. This must be considered when constructing a query to locate specific audit data using noncharacter identifying fields.

Audit data is always stored in the code page of the database. You can only audit archive and audit load data between databases with the same code page.