AGIIS Transition to UTF‐8 1/6/2010 Many AGIIS subscribers not only do business with customers in countries other than the United States, but also own and operate businesses in other countries. These subscribers are currently unable to add some entity records to the database with correct spelling because AGIIS does not currently support the necessary characters such as the “ñ” (a diacritical tilde over “n”) in the Spanish word Español or the “ç “ (cedilla) in the French word Français. The AGIIS Directory Oversight Committee has approved a project to make the AGIIS directory compatible with such characters by changing the character set used in AGIIS from ASCII to UTF‐8 (Eight‐bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format) 1 . This format was selected because it is can represent any character in the Unicode standard and it is backwards compatible with ASCII, making it a good choice for the AGIIS upgrade. This enhancement will have an effect on every subscriber who consumes data from AGIIS in an automated fashion if their internal systems are not UTF‐8 compatible. Does This Mean You? 1. Does your company currently receive/use EBID or GLN Update Extract files, GLN Bulk Submission Return files, EBID or GLN Subset Export files, Web Services, Product Extract or License Extract files from AGIIS? a. If no, the enhancement will not have an effect to your internal system. b. If yes, go to question 2. 2. Are any of the files mentioned above used in an automated process or are they all used manually? a. If the files are used manually, the enhancement will not have an effect to your internal system. b. If the files are used in an automated process, go to question 3. 3. Is one of the files that are processed in an automated fashion an EBID Update Extract in one of the following formats: EDI838 Document, ASCII Transaction File as 996, ASCII Transaction File as PF or ASCII Transaction File? a. If no, go to question 4. b. If yes, you will have 2 options (i and ii): i. Continue to receive your EBID Update Extract in the same format. When a character that is not compatible with the ASCII character set is to be saved to your file, the character will be replaced with a blank space. 1. If this is your choice and the EBID Update Extract file is the only file you get from AGIIS, the enhancement will not have an effect to your internal system, BUT you may 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
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receive incomplete data in the file because of the blank spaces. 2. If this is your choice and you get other files or web services from AGIIS, go to question 4. ii. Contact the AGIIS Help Desk to request that the file format that is used for your EBID Update Extract be changed to XML. 1. If this is your choice, changes to your internal system will be needed in order to load the new XML file format. 2. If this is your choice, go to question 4. Is the system that processes/stores the files UTF‐8 compatible? Please note: all possible points of interface are potentially affected including but not limited to: the processing application(s), the persistent storage repositories (e.g. sequential files, excel files, databases, etc), and middleware (e.g. BizTalk, Nexus, etc.). a. If yes to all, the UTF‐8 enhancement will not have an effect to your internal system. i. Note: If you have applied a filter so that files you submit to AGIIS are compatible with the ASCII character set, you should consider removing that filter after AGIIS is updated to support the UTF‐8 character set. b. If no, go to numbers 5, 6 & 7. If your internal systems are not UTF‐8 compatible, please make plans to upgrade your systems to be UTF‐8 compliant by April of 2010. The AGIIS Test environment will be UTF‐8 compatible in early April 2010 (perhaps earlier). The AGIIS Help Desk will then be able to provide small test files for your use to test your internal systems. Use of the UTF‐8 character set in the AGIIS production environment is expected to begin in June or July 2010.