- Domain: Manufacturing
- Technologies Used: IBMi, RPGLE, CLLE, DDS
Unicode Project – For Chinese characters
- To create a Unicode-enabled version of the software.
- The project involved two phases: (i) software modification and (ii) testing.
- The project is medium-sized, involving about 800 Physical Files (PF), 900 Logical Files (LF), 800 Display Files (DSPF), 700 Printer Files
(PRTF), and more than 2000 programs.
Challenge:
- The feature was relevant to alphanumeric data and every Unicode-enabled field occupies twice the original storage.
- Unicode-enablement is relatively new andIBM does not seamlessly support Unicode in applications developed using RPGLE & CLLE. Therefore, Logical Files, Display Files, and Printer Files, and RPGLE & CLLE programs also needed modifications.
- IBM does not provide Unicode support for legacy Printer Files that use O-specs. We had to convert around 200 programs to use external printer files instead of O-specs.
Solution:
- X-Analysis tool was utilized for the Unicode conversion process. The tool automated some of the modifications but the more complex changes had to be handled manually.
- We tested the Unicode-enabled version and resolved the issues that we came across.
- We identified functional issues by comparing our test results with results of the non-Unicoded version of the software.
