Character Internationalization in Databases: A Case Study

Character internationalization poses difficult problems for database management systems because they must address user (stored) data, source code, and metadata. The revised (1992) standard for database language SQL is one of the first standards to address internationalization in a significant way. DEC Rdb is one of the few Digital products that has a complete internationalization (Asian) implementation that is also MIA compliant. The product is still evolving from a noninternationalized product to a fully internationalized one; this evolution has taken four years and provides an excellent example of the issues that must be resolved and the approaches to resolving them. Rdb can serve as a case study for the software engineering community on how to build internationalized products.