Internationalization and Localization
Sybase supports internationalization through its datatypes nchar, nvarchar, unichar, and univarchar. Datatypes nchar and nvarchar are used for storing characters in the National Language Character Set, and datatypes unichar and univarchar are used for storing data in UTF-16 encoding. For more information, please see the Sybase documentation.
On the client side, Sybase localizes with the help of six operating system environment variables: LC_CTYPE, LC_COLLATE, LC_TIME, LC_MESSAGE, LC_ALL, and LANG. The values of these environment variables change the way Sybase interprets and converts data and produces error messages.
LC_CTYPE – Indicates the character set to use for datatype conversions.LC_COLLATE – Indicates the collating sequence to use when sorting and comparing character data.LC_TIME – Indicates the date and time data representation to use for a datetime string, such as date and time formats, names in the native languages, and month and day abbreviations.LC_MESSAGE – Indicates the language and character set to use for messages.LC_ALL – Acts as one environment variable for all the four above. If LC_ALL or LANG is set, none of the above four variables are used.LANG – Same as LC_ALL. It is used only if LC_ALL is not set.The first four definitions are taken from the Sybase International Developer’s Guide for Open Client/Server.
