By default, DB2 returns XML data to the driver encoded as UTF-8. To avoid data loss, an application must bind XML data as SQL_C_WCHAR. The driver then returns the data as either UTF-8 or UTF-16, depending on platform and application settings. If the application binds XML data as SQL_C_CHAR, the driver converts it to the client character encoding, possibly causing data loss or corruption. To prevent any conversion of XML data, the application must set the attribute XMLDescribeType (XDT) to SQL_LONGVARBINARY (-10) and bind the data as SQL_C_BINARY.