Re: Multi-language searches

NHuckle wrote in message <20001123181718.10400.00000176_at_ng-fm1.aol.com>...
>Hi
>
>I want to set-up a website that uses a graphic database that is linked to
>text-based records (narratives) in several languages. I want the user to
 be
>able to search the database in the native language (be it English, French,
>Japanese etc), but maintain the one copy of the graphic database.
>
>Can this be done inside one Oracle installation, or would multiple servers
 be
>required to hold the text-based databases in their native langauage?
>

One server and one database will be enough. Do not create a column in the tables for each language, but use primary keys that include a language code, e.g.:

30011en, "Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons."
30011eo, "Iam estis muelisto kiu havis tri filojn."
30011nl, "Er was eens een molenaar die drie zonen had."

Also, use UTF-8 if not all of the languages can be written using one 7 or 8 bits character set (which is of course the case if you use both English and Japanese). Storing data in more than one character set in the same table (or even in the same database) is not such a good idea.

Gerard van Wilgen Received on Mon Nov 27 2000 - 14:08:18 CET