Java Enterprise Best Practices

Design Your Database Schema to Be Internationalization-Ready

Dynamic data such as catalog items present another challenge when designing your application for internationalization. Databases are meant to store large amounts of data that change often, whereas resource bundles are not meant to collect such information. Therefore, it is imperative that you design for internationalization in the data model you choose for the database that will store data for your application.

The simplest example to understand with regard to data modeling is a product catalog. Imagine for a moment a very simplified version of Amazon.com or any web site that sells goods over the Internet. Products in the catalog contain a number of attributes that will vary depending on the locale, such as the product description or product image. If your application is internationalized, each product will have a one-to-many relationship with the localized attributes. In other words, a product will contain a description for each localization instance.

Designing your schema appropriately is a challenge in itself. Let’s look at a number of alternatives for modeling items from a catalog. Tables Table 8-1 through Table 8-6 offer three different models for a product entity that contains three attributes: a product ID, the quantity on hand, and a description. In this example, the description will need to be localized for the locales supported by your application.

Table 8-1. Product entity data model alternative #1 (PRODUCT) ...