language

The language table defines terminology mapping for many static terms used in the system for any number of different languages.

This allows users to change column or text headings globally to suit their particular installation. For example, ‘Lot Number’ may map to ‘Serial Number’, ‘Work Order’ to ‘Shop Order’, etc.

This allows each user to have their own language or terminology preference.

The first 100,000 string_id constants are allocated for MES internal use. End users are allowed to add string_id’s above 100,000. Only the string field for the pre-allocated rows in this table may be edited by users as code is dependent on the predefined internal description values. They may add any number of additional strings.

User-defined labels may be stored here if there are a finite set of them, e.g., user privileges or job states. If the user may define an arbitrarily large number of labels for things (e.g., items) only one term per thing will be allowed, and that won’t be stored here, but in the table wherein the thing (e.g., item) is described.

For future portability to languages that do not construct plurals or phrases in the same way as English, no attempt to save space will be made by building up multi-word labels from their component terms. For example, "New Job" would be stored as a distinct entry, and not built by concatenating "New" and "Job".

All character data will be stored in Unicode (16 bits per char) in the database.

FK from grp_id to language_grp. (Cascade delete)