Understanding Base Language Swapping

As delivered, the PeopleSoft database has a base language of English. The system has English data in its base language tables and, if you have installed the PeopleSoft-provided translations, non-English data in the related language tables. To choose a language other than English as your base language, you must move all English data to the related language tables (with an appropriate language code) and move all of the data in your new base language to the base tables. This process is called swapping the base language of your database. If you later decide to change base languages again, you must go through the same process.

There is a slight performance increase for the base language over the non-base languages, but there is extra administrative over head required when maintaining a swapped base environment. Take both of these into account if you are deciding whether to swap the base language.

PeopleSoft Data Mover provides the following command to automate this process:

SWAP_BASE_LANGUAGE target_language;

To swap the base language of your database, you must identify the language to swap in as the new base language. PeopleSoft Data Mover finds all the affected tables and loads the appropriate language data into them.

This process handles all related language tables in the system: PeopleTools tables and application tables. Changes are committed after each table is swapped; a log file records the process of the swap and can help you troubleshoot any errors during the process.

You can check the existing base language by looking in the PeopleTools Options page. To navigate to the PeopleTools Options page, select PeopleTools, and then Utilities, and then Administration, and then PeopleTools Options. You can't change the base language setting in this page; it is for display purposes only. To change the base language, use the SWAP_BASE_LANGUAGE PeopleSoft Data Mover command.