Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Internationalizing Applications

Converting a database and its data to a different code page

You can convert a database and its data from one code page (the source code page) to another code page (the target code page) if one or both of the following conditions are true:

Every character that appears in the source code page appears in the target code page.
Every character that appears in the database appears in the target code page.

You might want to convert a database and its data to a particular code page if the current code page does not contain characters that the application needs and that another code page contains. For example, code pages 1252 and ISO8859-15 contain characters that ISO8859-1 does not, as seen in Table 6–1.

Another reason to convert a database and its data to a particular code page is if the database’s data comes exclusively from a device with that code page. For example, if an airline reservations database gets its data exclusively from a terminal that uses the ISO8859-1 code page, you might want to convert the database and its existing data to ISO8859-1.

To convert a database and its data to another code page, run the PROUTIL utility with the CONVCHAR CONVERT qualifier. The syntax is:

Syntax

proutil dbname -C convchar convert new-codepage-name

dbname

The name of the database.

new-codepage-name

The name of the target code page.

For more information on code-page conversion, see Chapter 2, " Understanding Code Pages." For the complete syntax of the PROUTIL utility, see OpenEdge Data Management: Database Administration .