Does anyone have any experience, suggestions and so forth on supporting foreign currencies. In some of our web applications, the developer did it by maintaining a table with what the dollar was to the yen and so forth and then using that table. Sounds like a maintainence nightmare to me. We are definitely going to have the need for this in the next couple of months. Does anyone have any input???
Does anyone have any experience, suggestions and so forth on supporting foreign currencies. In some of our web applications, the developer did it by maintaining a table with what the dollar was to the yen and so forth and then using that table. Sounds like a maintainence nightmare to me.
We did exactly that and it wasn’t bad maintenance-wise if you think it through carefully. The important part is the join between the tables, it has to choose the right currency at the right time so the base currency table (ie. the table that will need to be translated) needs to have time and currency codes at least. You also will probably need an entry for the US dollar (1:1 always) to handle non-converting entries. Then just build your objects to always use the join and multiply the two numbers together. The USD values just get multiplied by one, the rest work as designed. With a little planning, it isn’t that bad.
Bearing in mind the temporal exchange-rate structure considered below, with some clever manipulation you may be able to auto-maintain this data from an external source.
One possibility is a trusted and accurate web site that lists exchange rates, which could be downloaded, processed and loaded into your table.
One solution that may provide zero-maintenance!
From: David Jelinek 7283[SMTP:DAVID.JELINEK@OPC.COM]
Sent: 15 September 1998 14:18
Does anyone have any experience, suggestions and so forth on supporting foreign currencies. In some of our web applications, the developer did it by maintaining a table with what the dollar was to the yen and so forth and then using that table. Sounds like a maintainence nightmare to me.
Does anyone have any experience, suggestions and so forth on >supporting
foreign currencies?
We have a finance system for which we are writing a universe and reports. Users have to be able to report in any currency they like from a finite list. Figures are going to be held in tables in the database in one currency only. Another table will hold currency conversion figures and then views will be used to calculate the figures in all the other currencies on the fly when required. All tables/views will contain a currency code field which will be part of the key so all joins will need to include currency to make sure the correct currency record is matched. Users will then select the currency when running the report to restrict records returned to one currency only. This is the best way we have come up with around the problem. We currently provide the reports in only one currency but that has not been popular.
I don’t know if this is the same sort of thing as you are trying to do, but I hope it helps you anyway.
