globalization

Store everything in GMT? Store everything the way it was entered with an embedded offset? Do the math everytime you render? Display relative Times "1 minutes ago"? You have to store in UTC - if you don't, your historic reporting and behaviour during things like Daylight Savings goes... funny. GMT is a local time, subject to Daylight Savings relative to UTC (which is not). Presentation to users in different time-zones can be a real bastard if you're storing local time. It's easy to adjust to local if your raw data is in UTC - just add your user's offset and you're done! Joel talked about this

In .NET is there any way to convert from three letter country codes (defined in ISO 3166-1 alpha-3) to two letter language codes (defined in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) eg. convert BEL to BE? Have looked at the RegionInfo class in System.Globalization but the constructor does not seem to support the three letter codes. Mormegil The RegionInfo class does know the three-letter code (in the ThreeLetterISORegionName property), but I don’t think there is a way to get RegionInfo based on this code, you would need to enumerate all regions and add them to your own dictionary, with the three-letter code as a

What is the " best " way to store international addresses in a database? Answer in the form of a schema and an explanation of the reasons why you chose to normalize (or not) the way you did. Also explain why you chose the type and length of each field. Note: You decide what fields you think are necessary. Plain freeform text. Validating all the world's post/zip codes is too hard; a fixed list of countries is too politically sensitive; mandatory state/region/other administrative subdivision is just plain inappropriate (all too often I'm asked which county I live in--when I don't, because

Can you recommend a good way to implement a Multilanguage system for a WPF app? The method I'm using right now involves XML, classes and a xaml extension. It Works fine in most of cases, but when I have to deal with dynamic labels or dynamic text in general it require some extra effort. I would like to let the programmer working only in the main problem and forgot the lang issues. CSharper I am using the WPF Localization Extension . It is a really easy way to localize any type of DependencyProperty on DependencyObject s. is in a real stable state supports binding-like writing style like Text =

What is the difference between CurrentCulture , InvariantCulture , CurrentUICulture and InstalledUICulture from System.Globalization.CultureInfo ? Paweł Dyda I would try to give a bit more insightful answer than this one . CurrentCulture should be used for formatting. That is, Numbers, Currencies, Percentages, Dates and Times should always be formatted with this culture before displaying them to user . Few examples here: const string CURRENCY_FORMAT = "c"; const string PERCENTAGE_FORMAT = "p"; DateTime now = DateTime.UtcNow; // all dates should be kept in UTC internally // convert time to

Given the following two cultures: CultureInfo c1 = InvariantCulture; CultureInfo c2 = new CultureInfo("en-US"); and i were to examine every piece of information specific to both cultures, e.g.: c1.DateTimeInfo.ShortDatePattern; c2.DateTimeInfo.ShortDatePattern; c1.DateTimeInfo.LongDatePattern; c2.DateTimeInfo.LongDatePattern; c1.NumberFormat.CurrencyDecimalDigits; c2.NumberFormat.CurrencyDecimalDigits; c1.TextInfo.IsRightToLeft; c2.TextInfo.IsRightToLeft; Would i find any differences? In other words, is the InvariantCulture, for all purposes, identical to the "en-US" culture? David Morton Yes.