☜	OMI - National Character Sets Draft MDC Standard					☞

4.4 National character sets
4.4.1 Database

Most M[UMPS] databases use the character set profile M[UMPS], defined in ANSI/MDC X11.1 Annex A. Some retain the collating sequence, pattern matching, and name characters of the M[UMPS] profile, but use different national character sets. And some use other character set profiles that cannot be translated to and from the M[UMPS] profile.

Many OMI transactions contain a global reference in the request, the response, or both. OMI defines the contents and collating sequence of subscripts and data values in these transactions in 2 ways, selected by the character translation field of the global reference:

• character translation = 0: Subscripts and data values shall use the M[UMPS] character set profile extended by the characters and codes 128 through 255 of the ISO 8859–1 Latin alphabet No. 1, which are common European symbols. Both agents and servers shall send this extended character set profile on output and shall accept it as input.
• character translation = 1: Subscripts and data values shall use the character set profile of the server. The agent shall refer to the server’s ssvns if necessary for the definition of the character set profile.

The connect transaction contains a character translation field that governs the content of all strings not governed by the global reference nor by explicit specifications of this standard:

• character translation = 0: Strings shall use the M[UMPS] character set profile extended by the characters and codes 128 through 255 of the ISO 8859–1 Latin alphabet No. 1. Both agents and servers shall send this extended character set profile on output and shall accept it as input.
• character translation = 1: Strings shall use the un-translated character set of the server.

An agent and a server that share a non-standard character set internally may set character translation = 1 throughout to avoid the burden of reciprocal translations to and from the M[UMPS] character set.

Copyright © Standard Documents; 1977-2024 MUMPS Development Committee;
Copyright © Examples: 1995-2024 Ed de Moel;
Copyright © Annotations: 2003-2008 Jacquard Systems Research
Copyright © Annotations: 2008-2024 Ed de Moel.

Some specifications are "approved for inclusion in a future standard". Note that the MUMPS Development Committee cannot guarantee that such future standards will indeed be published.

This page most recently updated on 14-Nov-2023, 21:46:20.

For comments, contact Ed de Moel (demoel@jacquardsystems.com)