ABAP - general

[Former Member]

what is unicode and non-unicode system??

[Former Member]

Hi,

You are correct that all new SAP Applications and SAP NetWeaver technology will only be available based on unicode (example: SAP NetWeaver MDM, SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer). Unicode code pages enable a system to store and process almost every character symbol in the world.

This means that the applications run on and can process characters from a unicode code page as opposed to a single character set code page like Latin 1 (restricted to only western European Language characters). The Database and it's schemas are able to store all the unicode characters.

The Non-Unicode Single code page systems are supported by SAP for older applications for historical reasons - unicode was not available when they were released. These systems are restricted to only processing characters from their specific code page. This means their can be restrictions if they need to support language combinations that span multiple code pages - basically it is not possible. In addition some languages are not fully available at all for single code page systems like Thai. In addition the Euro symbol is not available.

Unicode is the future for all applications - SAP or otherwise. The significance at the moment is where customers who needs to convert to unicode to support additional business requirements like additional languages. Converting a system, although a simple process is not a trivial process in terms of time and resources.

For additional info check out the following sites:

http://service.sap.com/unicode@SAP

http://service.sap.com/i18N

http://www.unicode.org

Regards,

Harish

[Former Member]

Hi,

Check the following sites,you can get

www.saptechnical.com

www.abapprogramming.blogspot.com

www.erpgenie.com

Regards,

Chandu

[Former Member]

Hi,

Unicode is a character encoding system similiar to ASCII. You can see the definiton for Unicode by Unicode consortium below.

Unicode is the universal character encoding, maintained by the Unicode Consortium.

This encoding standard provides the basis for processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language in all modern software and information technology protocols". Unicode covers all the characters for all the writing systems of the world, modern and ancient. It also includes technical symbols, punctuations, and many other characters used in writing text.

The Unicode Standard is intended to support the needs of all types of users, whether in business or academia, using mainstream or minority scripts.

Most of the SAP implementations are done on Unicode system as it support all kind of languages, which is good for a company to expend their business. Another things is Unicode system requires 70% more storage area and processing speed to run the system perfactly.

There are systems like XI, which can work only on Unicode so it is always advisible to go for unicode then to non-unicode.

Regards

Sandipan