Expanding the Unicode World to Support Existing Environments
Pat Glenski - IBM Corporation
Intended Audience: Managers, Software Engineers,Systems Analysts, Marketers, Technical Writers, Testers
Session Level: Beginner, Intermediate
This paper will discuss the various ways that IBM has enhanced its existing iSeries environments to make it easier for installed customers to migrate to and start to use Unicode data.
In today's world most software developers understand the need for Unicode and have a desire to start to use it. If you are designing an application from the start then it is easy to include Unicode. If you have a small set of data you can just say "change everything to Unicode".
However, for existing customers and existing data is it is not practical to just say "change every thing to Unicode". Especially if you have Terabytes of existing Data and you have limited budgets and a backlog of update requests already .
If you are in that situation you want the ability to slowly move parts of your application base to Unicode in as much of a nondisruptive manor as possible.
This session will discuss the updates and trade off's that were involved to allow existing customers of i5/OS to use Unicode. It will discuss such items as Database design, sorting, SQL interfaces, traditional screen interfaces, message support and message catalogs, automatic conversion support to and from Unicode, use of ICU and other support items.