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Unicode and ICU

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  • Unicode and ICU

    I apologize in advance, these questions are probably very broad in scope. I’m hoping someone will be willing to shed some light on a broad issue we are having trouble understanding. Some background information first: My company does mailorder type sales. We have a presence on the internet using windows servers with web sites that can take orders. Our internet group is working on converting their windows data to Unicode data which will allow them to handle just about any character set in any country. These orders received from the internet sites will create orders on our USA based iSeries. This is done via the internet group creating a simple text file that the iSeries FTP’s. This data received from the internet will simply pump through an RPGIV batch job creating the orders within the iSeries mailorder databases. Our questions: If we were to change our iSeries to allow this internet Unicode data to reside in our iSeries mailorder databases, how does one allow a USA based user, using a USA keyboard, to search on a customer’s last name? In certain cases, the customer’s last name could have a myriad of “odd” characters. I’m using the logic of searching on a customer's last name as a simple example. There is obviously a myriad of other potential data problems. Is there a way to cleanse the Unicode data, which will ensure that all characters are 100% USA “compatible”? I understand ICU has transform functions which can translate the Unicode data into any other code page. I’ve done some research on the IBM sites, but have been overwhelmed by the whole Unicode world. What ICU function(s) do I need and what code page would give us the best coverage of data translation? We are guessing that certain languages (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc) are impossible to translate to USA. Is this a fair assumption? Is there a way, programmatically, to block our internet sites from accepting these characters? I’ve done some basic research on Unicode and ICU, but my experience with all this is obviously at an infancy stage. In a nut shell, I'm hoping someone could help narrow down what aspects of Unicode and ICU could best help our situation? Thanks in advance. Lloyd Bailey
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