What Is National Language Support?

National Language Support (NLS) involves reading and interpreting data stored in code pages that represent the character sets of various international languages. For systems implemented across multiple platforms, NLS support involves transcoding each graphic character on one code page into the corresponding graphic character on another code page.

For example, to transcode the German graphic character Ä from IBM mainframe EBCDIC German code page 273 to its corresponding value in Windows Western European code page 1252, the Information Builders transcoding engine changes hexadecimal value 0x4A (mainframe) to hexadecimal value 0xC4 (Windows). For more information on code pages, see Understanding Code Pages.

Additional NLS functions include:

• Sorting. A sort order is defined for each code page.
• Monocasing. Monocasing (also called case conversion) converts a letter from its lowercase to uppercase form (or vice versa).
• Date and time formats. You can select date and time formats for local languages.
• Decimal notation and large number formatting. You can select proper decimal notation and formatting for large numbers and currency for local languages.