Conversion from US/English database to International Character Sets

We are planning on expanding our client base to cover other countries. When we do this, we anticipate that will require converting to using the extended international facilities in Oracle 8.

We currently have extremely large tables so we are a bit concerned about the process of getting there from here. Perhaps if you have had any experience in this sort of conversion, you might reply to the following list of questions, or perhaps you have something to add that you don't see me asking:

1. What is the best method to begin conducting our business internationally?
2. Does our data need to be converted to use the extended character set?
3. If we must convert our data, should we be concerned that it may not convert correctly or that something that used to make sense will now be nonsense?
4. Assuming that data conversion is necessary, is there an easy way to convert the data?
5. What programming concerns should we be watchful over?
6. What runtime concerns should we be aware of?

Thanks for the help,

Regards,
Jeff Rudnick
Rudnick & Associates, Inc.
jeff_at_rudnick.org Received on Mon Sep 13 1999 - 23:31:50 CDT