Upgrading a project using ISO character sets to UTF8 character sets

Projects that can be converted transparently

Projects with these specific language settings in the config file can be handled automatically:

• Monolingual projects

• Multilingual projects if all project languages belong to the same ISO character set (e.g. iso8859-1).

When compatible language settings are detected in the config file the

• Upgrade process changes the names of languages in use from .isoXXXXX (XXXXX represents the character set) to .utf8 in the config file.

• The setting useDbAsIso = 1 will be amended in the general section of the config file.

• The order of languages will be kept.

Projects that need manual conversion

Multilingual projects with languages from different ISO character sets cannot be migrated automatically. For a project upgrade a manual conversion of the project is necessary. This includes export and import of project files. For further information please do not hesitate to get in touch with your WinCC OA support channel.

Converting panels from ISO projects

If panels in the PNL format from an ISO project shall be used in a UTF8 project, some parameters (e.g. if you pass a text with special characters as a dollar parameter) may not be correctly displayed. In this case these panels must be converted to XML panels in the ISO project. In the UTF8 project you can convert them back to the PNL format (see also Format conversion). To convert all panels to XML and back to PNL proceed as follows:

1) Save the panel directory of the ISO project (since all panel files are overwritten by the conversion)

2) Open the ISO project

3) Execute "WCCOAui -PROJ <ISO project name> -xmlConvert=XML" in Command Line

4) Copy the panel directory to the UTF8 project

5) Close the ISO project and open the UTF8 project

6) Execute "WCCOAui -PROJ <UTF8 project name> -xmlConvert=PNL" in Command Line

Limitations

The customer shall ensure the compliant usage of characters in UTF8 based projects equivalent to the original ISO character sets. Otherwise data which is not included in the corresponding character set could be lost. Below you’ll find a table of the equivalent ISO-character sets. All languages listed in one block can be transformed automatically. All other languages belong to separate language sets and cannot be combined with any other language.