Before you start developing an international application, you must carefully research the markets that you are targeting so that you can list the technical, cultural, legal, and linguistic aspects that your application must handle. Next, plan in detail how your application will address these issues in the user interface and in back-end processing. Finally, select an application structure and coding conventions that protect your productivity while supporting the modularity that international applications require.
Use the following guidelines to help you assess the requirements of each market:
Research hardware and software issues that affect the input and output of data
Research business standards, legal issues, and local conventions
Research cultural conventions that affect the user interface
Research language issues that affect the processing and display of data
Plan your localization and translation strategies
Design a base user interface that can accommodate different languages and cultural conventions
Implement a modular structure for your application that isolates language- or region-specific routines or objects
Follow coding standards that handle multi-byte characters correctly, even if you do not initially plan to deploy your applications in markets that require multi-byte processing
Consider whether your application requires multi-lingual support and if the OpenEdge implementation of the Unicode Standard meets your requirements
For more information on programming and system administration issues that you must consider when developing and deploying an international OpenEdge application, see Preparingthe Code and Deploymentand Configuration.
Research hardware and software issues that affect the input and output of data