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PWB508 Developing International Applications Using PowerBuilder

PWB508 Developing International Applications Using PowerBuilder. Jinyou Zhu Senior Software Engineer jyzhu@ sybase .com August 8, 2003. Guo-Bi Wu Senior Software Engineer guo-bi.wu@sybase.com. Developing International Applications Using PB. Presentation Outline.

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PWB508 Developing International Applications Using PowerBuilder

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  1. PWB508 Developing International Applications Using PowerBuilder Jinyou ZhuSenior Software Engineer jyzhu@sybase.comAugust 8, 2003 Guo-Bi WuSenior Software Engineer guo-bi.wu@sybase.com

  2. Developing International Applications Using PB Presentation Outline • Overview of Internationalization • Current status • PowerBuilder 9 for international application development • PowerBuilder 10 & Unicode • Q & A

  3. Overview of Internationalization Two phases for Internationalization • Localization (L10N) • The process in which software is customized for each language you want to support. • The GUI/Doc translation will be done at this stage. • Internationalization (I18N) • The process in which code is modified to be culturally independent.

  4. Localization (L10N) GUI & Documentation

  5. Internationalization (I18N) Process generalization • Choose code page • Determine what character set to support. It is the mapping table of characters to their numerical value. • Different countries use different code pages. • Standard for Code Pages (ASCII, EBCDIC, JIS (Japanese standard), GB2312-80(Simplified Chinese standard), Big5 (Traditional Chinese standard), etc) • Choose locales • Determine the format for text, number, date, currency, etc. • Externalization of strings, icons and graphics with text. • Modifying all the text manipulation functions to be aware of the code page. • Numeric and Currency Formatting. • Date and Time Formatting • Collation (sorting order) • Cultural consideration • Icons & pictures

  6. Choose Code Pages Choose Code Pages • MBCS/DBCS/SBCS • It will use the code page and system’s locale for your application. • It is used in most applications currently. • Unicode • Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, or language. • It is better and natural for international applications.

  7. MBCS/DBCS/SBCS What is MBCS ? • MBCS -- Multi bytes Character Set • Use multi-bytes to represent a character. • DBCS -- Double Character Set • Use double bytes to represent a character such as Chinese, Japanese. • SBCS -- Use one byte, such as English, most European languages • MBCS/DBCS/SBCS Features • MBCS/DBCS are compatible to SBCS • Use 1 byte to represent ASCII • Use 2 bytes to represent other characters such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc.

  8. Unicode What is Unicode ? • Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, or language. • There are 2 sets of Unicode: • UCS-2: use one 16bit unit (2 bytes) to represent a character. (up to 65535 characters) • UCS-4: use one 32bit unit (4 bytes) to represent a character. UCS-4 is a superset of UCS-2. It includes more characters. • There are 3 popular Unicode Transformation Formats • UTF-8: Use 1 to 4 bytes to represent one Unicode character. ASCII characters is the same as those in ASCII. To represent UCS-2, need 1 to 3 bytes. To represent UCS-4, needs 1-4 bytes. • UTF-16: Use 1 or 2 (for UCS-4) 16bit unit to represent one Unicode character. • UTF-32: Use 1 32bit unit to represent one Unicode character.

  9. PB 9 for international application development Features for international application development • PowerBuilder 9 is a DBCS system. It can process and display DBCS characters only. • PowerBuilder 9 support Unicode database • The multi-Language character can be stored in the Unicode database. • PowerBuilder 9 support some Multi-Language code pages • The database can support Multi-Language code pages such as CP850. • PowerBuilder 9 makes full use of your current locale • If your default locale support one language, PowerBuilder 9 can process/display the language. • Conversion • The conversion will be based on the default locale. When process the data, PowerBuilder 9 will convert it to your current locale, then display them.

  10. How Does it work in PowerBuilder 9 ? (2-tiers) 2-tier system Database Data Convert DB Driver PB internal DBCS UI/DW Web Service DBCS WS Client Localized OS EJB/DB EJB JDBC Server Client

  11. How Does it work in PowerBuilder 9 ? (n-tiers) 3-tier system App Server Database Component DB Driver PB internal NVO UTF8 DBCS UI/DW Convert DBCS Web Service WS UTF8 UTF NVO Localized OS JDBC DB UNI App Server Client

  12. An example – Address Book Sample database and table • There is a Unicode database, which support multi-languages • The structure and data of the table are:

  13. An example – Address Book (con’t) Configurations and Tips • Tips: • Because PowerBuilder 9 is a DBCS application running on a localized Operating system, it can only support the language(s), which your OS supports. • Because conversion from Unicode to the code page of your current locale will happen, you have to arrange your data (in database) carefully. • If you simply show all data in DW, some rows/columns will be garbage.

  14. Develop international applications in PowerBuilder 9 Problem • Issues • Extra effort on database and data manipulation (select and update). • Internationalization must be well planed and difficult to implement. • Cannot show Multi-Languages in a single form. • There were hundreds of different, sometimes unrelated, systems of encoding. The effort to add one more language support will be huge.

  15. PowerBuilder 10 For International application development • Fully support Unicode • PowerBuilder 10 is Unicode enabled. It uses Unicode as its native code page for all components. • It can process multi-language data in one application and display them in a single form.

  16. Why use Unicode ? • Unicode allows a program or website to be targeted for multiple platforms, languages and countries. • It defines codes for all characters used in all major languages written today. • It is able to encode multilingual text. • Unicode is the official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646. • It has been adopted by many of the industry leaders. • It allows data transfer between different systems without corruption.

  17. Benefits Benefits • Unicode can handle text in any language or any combination of languages. • You can process and show characters in multi-language in the single form. • It is possible that one application fits for all languages. • Conversion is only necessary on incoming and outgoing data without corrupt. • No data lose when convert from any code page to Unicode. • It simplifies operations on text because there is no longer a need to keep track of what encoding scheme is being used. • Disadvantages • Because one character in Unicode take 2 bytes, it consume more memory.

  18. PowerBuilder 10 – New Features New Features related to Unicode • Fully support Unicode. • New PBL format to cover multi-language support. • Migration tool to old PBL format to new one. • Export object to a Unicode file. • Import ANSI & Unicode objects to PB10. • Support ANSI & Unicode APIs form PBNI. • JSP will support ANSI, UTF8, and UTF16. • Read/write both ANSI and Unicode files in PowerScript. • Support Unicode & non-Unicode database.

  19. Example & Demo Demo • Use the same database and same example as above.

  20. SDN Presents CodeXchange Share PowerBuilder 9 Code and Tools • New SDN feature enables community collaboration • Download samples created by Sybase • Leverage contributions of others to exploit PBNI (i.e. PBNI CommonDialog, PBNI OLEObject utilities) • Contribute your own code or start your own collaborative project with input from other PowerBuilder experts • Any SDN member can participate • Log in using your MySybase account via SDN • Join the collaboration already underway • http://powerbuilder.codexchange.sybase.com or via SDN at www.sybase.com/developer • SDN & CodeXchange at TechWave • Technology Boardwalk • Sybase Booth Theater

  21. SDN Presents CodeXchange A New Benefit for Sybase Developers • Forum for exchanging samples, tools, scripts, etc. • New features enable community collaboration • Download samples created by Sybase or external users • Leverage contributions of others to extend Sybase tools • Contribute code or start your own collaborative / open source project with input from other product experts • Any SDN member can participate • Log in using your MySybase account via SDN • Join the collaboration already underway • http://www.codexchange.sybase.com or via SDN at www.sybase.com/developer • Visit SDN in the Technology Boardwalk or the Sybase Booth Theater

  22. Q & A Thank You

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