NLS Component

The design team created the national language support (NLS) component with more than the PT application's requirements in mind. Their objective was to design a full-featured and robust component that any application requiring globalization can use. Planning the Globalized PT Application and Designing the Globalized PT Application describe development issues for globalized and localized applications. The NLS component must be able to translate currency, date, time, and decimal data to and from any locale without negatively impacting the performance of the application.

A full-featured localization component must:

• Transform locale-sensitive data to and from the database and the browser interface as required by the locale setting of the user's computer and the SQL Server installation in which the Eval database resides.
• Address all needs for translating locale-specific data (date, time, decimal, and currency), in addition to meeting the localization requirements for the PT application.

The implemented version of the NLS component is named Formats and is included in the NLS DLL. The Formats component (see Formats Methods and Declarations) does not include methods that address all localized data issues, but it includes placeholders for future development. Converting a Recordset to XML describes how the PT application uses methods in Formats to convert date and time information. NLS.dll also includes the Global module (Global.bas), which contains constants, type definitions, and Win32 API declarations that are used by the NLS (Formats) component.