International character set
All, My company is in the process of internationalizing (is that a word?) our website, and as such, I need to make sure the database can handle international character sets. How do I configure it so that the db can handle international characters? Is there a conversion that needs to be done? This is all new to me, so any and all help is appreciated. Terrence Mullins Database Administrator www.WagerWorks.com
Your database must support Unicode technology that is used for multi-lingual applications. Rajesh Rajasekaran SAP Database Administrator Forest Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (314) 493 - 7073 -----Original Message----- From: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Terrence Mu.... Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 10:47 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: International character set [3380] All, My company is in the process of internationalizing (is that a word?) our website, and as such, I need to make sure the database can handle international character sets. How do I configure it so that the db can handle international characters? Is there a conversion that needs to be done? This is all new to me, so any and all help is appreciated. Terrence Mullins Database Administrator www.WagerWorks.com ____________________________________________________________________ This e-mail and its attachments may contain Forest Laboratories, Inc. proprietary information that is privileged, confidential or subject to copyright belonging to Forest Laboratories, Inc. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering this e-mail to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout.
Rajesh Rajasekaran <RRajasekaran@forestpharm.com> wrote on 08/31/2004 09:50:34 AM: > Your database must support Unicode technology that is used for multi-lingual > applications. > > Terrence Mullins <terrence@wagerworks.com> wrote: >> My company is in the process of internationalizing (is that a word?) our >> website, and as such, I need to make sure the database can handle >> international character sets. How do I configure it so that the db can >> handle international characters? Is there a conversion that needs to be >> done? This is all new to me, so any and all help is appreciated. That's something of an overstatement, though it isn't completely wrong either. Yes, 'internationalize' and its derivative forms are words. I18N, or InternationalizatioN, is a well known term in the trade; the 18 stands for the 18 characters omitted between the initial I and final N. It is the first step towards L10N (LocalizatioN), which is the process of presenting data in the clients preferred format language and format. It depends on how multinational your internationalized application is going to be. If you are working with, say, Western European languages only, then the default ISO 8859-1 (or more modern ISO 8859-15) character set is appropriate - it covers most languages. If you need a wider audience - including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Turkish, etc, then Unicode is the correct choice. In case of doubt, use Unicode; it is the direction of the future. But it is not the only way of internationalizing code. Check out the ICU functionality in GLS. IDS stores UTF-8 if you ask it to. -- Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@us.ibm.com) STSM, Informix Database Engineering, IBM Data Management 4100 Bohannon Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: +1 650-926-6921 Tie-Line: 630-6921 "I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it!"