Appendix D NATIVE LANGUAGE SUPPORT

Native Language Support (NLS) features can be accessed in QUERY to retrieve data which meet user-defined selection criteria, and to sort data according to native language collating sequences. The user must know what the user language in QUERY is, how the language is specified, how the language affects the output, and how to determine which language is being used.

IMAGE data bases have a language attribute that describes the collating sequence used in sorted chains and locking. This language attribute does not affect QUERY operation.

Although QUERY commands are in English, the output will be sorted and formatted according to the QUERY user's language. The language of the data base may determine the data sequence while using QUERY passively for retrieval (e.g., FIND). When data is being sorted or formatted by QUERY, the user's language will determine the ordering and formatting of the data.

For example, in a French data base with a QUERY user's language of Danish, data items in a sorted chain might be retrieved according to the French collating sequence; but the sorting or formatting is done according to Danish criteria.

The user can specify the QUERY user's language by:

For example, if the user's language is French, the QUERY command is:

Or the MPE Job Control Word NLUSERLANG may be used:

:SETJCW NLUSERLANG = 7

The LANGUAGE= command always overrides NLUSERLANG. If neither option is used to specify the user's langauage, QUERY assumes LANGUAGE=0 (Native-3000). NATIVE-3000 is the default, which ensures backward compatibility. When the user's language is NATIVE-3000, QUERY performs as it did before NLS features were available.

QUERY allows access to more than one data base at the same time. This means that more than one data base language attribute may be active at the same time. In any case, upshifting, collating, range selection, formatting, or sorting is dependent on the QUERY user's language specified by the user via the JCW NLUSERLANG or the LANGUAGE= command.