Re: Positioning the Cursor, from the Toolbox

    Hi Joe,

    I'm not aware of a standard, or even AS/400 proprietary, general
alternative to handling storage of multiple character sets that doesn't
involve a different file/table for each encoding.  Even then, you have to go
two bytes for double-byte languages like Chinese.  Internationalization (
I18N ) and Localization ( L10N ) are issues for and beyond all programming
languages, so it's not a Java  v. RPG  v. C  v. COBOL, etc.
thing, other than included capabilities.

    If my previous message seemed to imply that everyone should do a
wholesale conversion to Unicode via UTF-8, then I made a communication
error, althuogh I tried to be explicit that it related to I18N issues.

    I'm always happy to be educated if you have a better solution than
Unicode, especially as UTF-8,  and I'm sure others would be interested as
well.  Thanks,


                                                         Joe Sam

Joe Sam Shirah -        http://www.conceptgo.com
conceptGO       -        Consulting/Development/Outsourcing
Java Filter Forum:       http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/
Just the JDBC FAQs: http://www.jguru.com/faq/JDBC
Going International?    http://www.jguru.com/faq/I18N
Que Java400?            http://www.jguru.com/faq/Java400


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400'"
<java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 8:49 AM
Subject: RE: Positioning the Cursor, from the Toolbox

From: Joe Sam Shirah

    It was unfortunate to have to make that kind of trade off not just

for

Java, but for I18N issues in general.  The good news, for I18N anyway,

is

that as of V5R3, UTF-8 is supported.  The only downside is that for some
character sets UTF-8 actually requires *three* bytes.  Fortunately,

those

are relatively rare.  For most languages, UTF-8 will use just one byte,

so

shops using UCS-2 and those staying away from Unicode due to previously
having to use UCS-2 may want to convert/reconsider.

    Java will still convert to standard Unicode.

But that's no reason to store your data in Unicode.  If you are

comfortable

using a single-byte code set, then reducing your disk space (typically by
about 30%, given numeric fields) is probably worth the conversion going in
and out of the database.  This is especially true if the bulk of your
processing logic is in RPG (as it should be IMO), since RPG is a

single-byte

language.

Joe