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Best Practices in Database Design for Multilingual Enterprise Applications
To build a multilingual database, there are usually two methods: create localized tables for each table or add language-specific columns to the tables. While the latter approach is simpler, it affects flexibility. To determine the best option for enterprise applications, let's examine each approach in detail.
Localization table
This approach creates a separate table for each language. For example, instead of a single "Product" table, you can create multiple tables such as "Product_En", "Product_Fr", and so on. Each table only contains data for a specific language.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Language-specific columns
This approach is to add language specific columns to the table. For example, the "Products" table can contain columns named "ProductDescription_En", "ProductDescription_Fr", and so on.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Recommended method
For enterprise applications that require flexibility and scalability, the preferred approach is to create two tables for each multilingual object. The first table contains language-independent data (e.g., primary keys), while the second table contains language-specific data and the ISO code of the language.
This arrangement allows processing of any number of languages without modifying the table structure. Furthermore, it ensures data consistency and provides efficient performance.
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