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Unicode Project
CONTENTS
The Inevitable Unicode Project............1
What is Unicode?................................2
Why should I adopt Unicode?..............2
Planning System Resources for
Unicode System..................................3
What should you know about Endians
in Unicode conversion?.......................4
What resources do I need to convert
my non-Unicode system to Unicode?. .4
Converting MDMP systems to Unicode
means more complexity?....................5
Unicode conversion project phases.....6
A. Planning.......................................6 Tik k ana Ak urat i ,
B. Execution.....................................6 U n i c o d e S A P. c o m
C. Finalization..................................6 Up g rad e & Unico d e Sp e cialis t
I) Unicode Preparation steps............6
II) Unicode conversion.....................8
III) Post-conversion steps.................9
Summary............................................9
About the Author................................9
Network: No impact on
network due to efficient
compression techniques
employed by SAP between DB
and application servers.
conversion?
When converting to Unicode, the
export code page must correspond to
the Endianness of the target system. What resources do I
But what is an Endian, and how many
Endians are out there? Fortunately
need to convert my
there are only two Endians. The word non-Unicode
“Endian” has to do with where the
most significant byte (MSB) comes first system to Unicode?
or in other words where big “end”
comes first. If the MSB comes at the Unicode conversion projects need
lowest address and the least thorough planning and meticulous
significant byte at the highest address execution. A good project plan can
then you are dealing with Big Endian. help you immensely in the long run.
Little Endian is the other type of For large systems’ conversion process,
arrangement of MSB ordering. That is if you need at least one more system
the least significant byte of the that is similar to your non-Unicode
number is stored in memory at the system. Your non-Unicode system is
lowest address and the most usually called the Source and the other
significant byte at the highest address system is called the Target. You would
then it is Little Endian. An example convert and export your source system
would be the following: to dump files on a shared disk space
0xAABBCC would be stored as follows: and import into the target system.
Big Little The export and import above can
Addre Endia Endia happen in parallel if you use Unicode
ss n n conversion tools like Migration Monitor
(MigMon) and/or Distribution Monitor
2 CC AA
(DistMon) to speed up the process.
1 BB BB GoodStrong experience using these
0 AA CC tools is essential for a successful
conversion.
The export code page should match
the Endianness of the machine that Here is a quick list of the essential
runs R3load to import data. resources you need:
1) Additional system for preparing an
Here is a table that helps with which empty target Unicode system. (You
code page to use: will import your Unicode converted
data into this system).
2) Additional disk space for common
Cod export area and for running
e Endia
pag n
language scans for a source MDMP
e type Machine Architecture system.
3) ABAP team to convert your non –
Little Alpha, Intel X86 (and Unicode programs to Unicode
Endia clones),X86_64, Itanium
4103 n (Windows+Linux),Solaris_X86_64 compatibility.
4) Language team to map the
vocabulary in different languages
Figure SPUMG transaction screenshot showing all the tabs for the
5 language scans in a Unicode conversion of an MDMP
system.
Summary
Unicode conversion projects are often
under-estimated. A Unicode conversion
project should be treated as the same
if not more complex, if not more
complex, than a typical Upgrade
project. A high level overview of thea
Unicode conversion project and some
key project steps were givenprovided
in this article. There are many topics
that you will come across during an
Unicode Conversion project (e.g.for
example archiving, data reduction,
performance tuning for reduced
conversion downtime, adoption of new
tablespace naming convention and/or
custom tablespace names, etc.,). TThe
side benefits of a Unicode project are
reduced number of tablespaces and a
defragmented database. In addition,
Aa unicode conversion enables your
company to benefit from new
technologies and support all languages
in the world.