Overview

Globalization means, in this context, adapting computer software to different languages. It is now commonplace that data be accessed by users around the globe and that applications present the data in the user’s own language. Support for globalization in PSQL allows your application to store text in multiple languages in the same database. This means that your application can store, process, and retrieve data in whatever language is required.

This chapter explains the PSQL features with which you can support globalization for your applications. It discusses overall approaches to globalization and the particular PSQL features that support globalized applications. By default, PSQL remains backward compatible with legacy text encodings and this chapter also discusses the settings that ease globalization for applications using legacy encodings.