SourcePro DB is an internationalized software product. By internationalized, we mean that SourcePro DB:

• Functions properly regardless of national formatting conventions or localized character sets

• Formats data types according to localized rules

• Supports multibyte and wide character strings for database input and output

• Supports the national character set database types

• Supports UTF-16 data

This chapter focuses on character sets and data formatting, and explains in detail the classes and methods that the DB Interface Module provides for internationalizing database applications. In addition to this chapter, the documentation for each DB Access Module contains information on internationalization as it relates to the given database. Please note that not all databases support the same level of internationalization. In this chapter, we sometimes follow common usage and abbreviate internationalization as i18n.