Re: String Searching

You can request sort sequence based on language, when creating and using
index/LF. There are two predefined sort tables for every language - *LANGIDUNQ
and *LANGIDSHR. One of them will sort lower- and upper-case together, another
will separate them.
I would guess that French-language table will sort "a" and "a accent' together.
You may look through the list of available sort sequence tables using WRKTBL
*ALL.

If changing language settings will create undesirable side-effects, you can
create a customized sort sequence table and refer to it when creating and using
index/LF.
When creating sort sequence table you can address all these issues - sort lower
and upper case together,
sort "a" and "a accent" together etc.


Best regards
    Alexey Pytel



"Doug Holmes" <doug@netserv.ouac.on.ca> on 05/27/99 02:42:27 PM

Please respond to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com

To:   midrange-l@midrange.com
cc:    (bcc: Alexei Pytel/Rochester/IBM)
Subject:  String Searching





Hi,

We stores people's names in our database in mixed upper-/lower- case, and mixed
english/french characters.  We've gradually been experiencing little problems
now with
name searches, alphabetically sorted lists, etc., since the characters get
sorted  {a,b,
..., z, A, B, ..., Z} and english letters like "e" and "a" not being equal to
"e`" and "a`"
(i.e. letter with french accent above).  So, names like "de Silva" do not sort
with the
rest of the "D's", "von ..." do not sort with the rest of the "V's", etc. We've
tossed
around a couple of solutions like:

1) storing another version of the name fields in strict upper-case/english only,
and
using that for searching, then displaying the other version to users

2) building temporary files containing the same as in 1) as needed

3) translating the data in the input records and search arguments on the fly as
they're
read from the file (which may mean reading the complete file in some
applications, or
at least more reads than just doing a basic "<search argument> SETLL <file> and
<search argument> READE <file>" (we're RPG users <grin>).

Does anyone have any other tricks or solutions that you'd be willing to share?

Thanks in advance,
Doug
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  Doug Holmes
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  Ontario Universities' Application Centre
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