Unicode conversion

[Former Member]

Dear all

I usually have all customers with unicode systems.

However there is one running BW3.5 and ECC5.0 on non unicode. For things to be worse they have old machines i.e DEC Alphas.

In order to move to a new platform(i.e perform migration and afterwards upgrade to ECC6 which is actually their goal) they will hav to perform unicode conversion.

Here comes my questions:

What additional resources they will need. I got an old presentation and if I understood from there is need of additionall hardware resources (UTF-16 up to70% bigger DB, UTF- 8 10-35%). Is it through?

What is difference in UTF-16 and UTF-8?

What will be increase of DB size (existing 2TB) on Alpha?

CPU 30%, RAM50%?

Thank you a lot in advance

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi my friend,

CPU: Average increase +10...30%

Depends on transaction mix, MDMP or Single Code Page, single byte or double byte languages. The figures also depend on the processor type. Modern processors showed 10% increase, older processors up to 30%.

Main Memory: Average increase +40...50%

Reason: Application servers are based on UTF-16

Network load: ~0%

Almost no change due to efficient compression.

Database size: Average increase

• UTF-8: +10%

+10% is the observed maximum for larger systems (DB size > 200), smaller systems might grow more

• UTF-16: +20...60%

Note: Additional CPU/Main Memory hardware resource requirements on standalone DB servers must be provided by DB vendors.

The database size increase depends on various factors. The most important one is the database encoding scheme of the platform, e.g. UTF-16 requires remarkably more space than CESU-8.

Please refer to note 1139642 for more details.

Regards,