Multiple languages in same table OK? 2

[Sleidia]

Hi,

I've never paid attention before, but, is it really OK to have records in multiple languages (ie: japanese, chinese, english, french) all in the same table?

If not, what's the correct way?

I'm asking that mainly because of the encoding features of phpmyadmin, which kind of confuse me.

Thanks !

 

[TonyGroves]

I've no experience of this, but as far as I'm aware, any field which uses a Unicode character-set can contain any language, and even several languages at once. However, each field has a defined collation order, which varies between languages; you would have to decide on a suitable collation.

 

[r937]

tony, star from me, that's very helpful information

this would argue strongly for having separate tables -- table_chinese, table_arabic, etc.

my experience is limited to having lang_id as part of a composite pk in a single table

but this would impose a single collating sequence, which would of course not suit all languages

r937.com | rudy.ca

 

[Sleidia]

Thanks Tony !

I had never heard of "collation order" before.

I've found a good explanation here :

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=328641&seqNum=1

But, isn't it a typo in :

Character set support currently is included in the MySISAM, MEMORY (HEAP), and (as of MySQL 4.1.2) InnoDB storage engines. The ISAM storage engine does not include character set support; there are no plans to change this, because ISAM is deprecated.

Shouldn't it be written "myISAM" ?

I got really confused just from the start

 

[TonyGroves]

Thanks for those stars, lads; I wasn't expecting any for that modest contribution.

Presumably MySISAM should be MyISAM. ISAM is another thing altogether; an older storage engine.