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General Section Parameters in the Configuration File

The parameters in the General section contains general server default parameters, including localization and internationalization, temporary space and memory allocation, and other default parameters used to determine how data is returned from the Siebel Analytics Server to a client.

NOTE:  The settings for the parameters LOCALE, SORT_ORDER_LOCALE, SORT_TYPE and CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON, described in the following topics, are interrelated. They help determine how the Siebel Analytics Server sorts data.

LOCALE

Specifies the locale in which data is returned from the server. This parameter also determines the localized names of days and months. For example, if the LOCALE="dutch," then names of days and months are returned from the server in Dutch. The localized message strings are written to various log files as well as returned to the user as error messages. See also the topic area Localizing Siebel Analytics Deployments.

The default LOCALE is "english-usa". If you want to use a setting other than the default, you need to explicitly set the value of this parameter.

NOTE:  Do not confuse these two-letter Siebel Analytics language extensions with the Siebel operational applications three-letter language codes shown in Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on the Siebel SupportWeb Knowledge Base.

The supported languages and language extension values are shown in Table 39.

Table 39. Supported Languages and Language Extensions for LOCALE and SORT_ORDER_LOCALE
Supported Language
Language Extension

Chinese (Simplified)

zh

Chinese (Traditional)

zh-tw

Czech

cs

Danish

da

Dutch

nl

English (US)

en

Finnish

fi

French

fr

German

de

Italian

it

Japanese

ja

Korean

ko

Portuguese (European)

pt

Portuguese (Brazilian)

pt-br

Spanish

es

Swedish

sv

For more information about Analytics Catalog Manager and language extensions, see Siebel Analytics Web Administration Guide.

SORT_ORDER_LOCALE

Used to help determine whether the Siebel Analytics Server can function-ship an ORDER BY clause (used in sorting) to an relational database.

Every database defined in the Physical Layer in the Server Administration Tool has a features table associated with it. If you want to override the default value in the Features table for a particular type of relational database, you need to do it for all occurrences of it in the Physical Layer.

In the Server Administration Tool, the Database dialog > Features tab > Features table specifies the features and functions that the relational database supports. The settings for SORT_ORDER_LOCALE in the Features table and in the NQSConfig.INI file should match only if the database and the Siebel Analytics Server sort data in the same way.

For the relational database and the Siebel Analytics Server to sort data the same way, they must be in agreement on the parameters shown in Table 40.

Table 40. Critical SORT_ORDER_LOCALE Parameters
Functional Category
Specific Parameters

Base language

LOCALE

SORT_ORDER_LOCALE

NOTE:  The default value for SORT_ORDER_LOCALE in both the Features table and in the NQSConfig.INI file is english-usa.
If the Siebel Analytics Server and the database sort data differently, the Features table entry SORT_ORDER_LOCALE for the database needs to be set to a different value than english-usa.

Case

CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON

Binary versus linguistic comparison

SORT_TYPE

The SORT_ORDER_LOCALE entries in the Features table and in the NQSConfig.INI file match only if the database and the Siebel Analytics Server have matching settings in these areas. If the settings do not match, wrong answers can result when using multidatabase joins, or errors can result when using the Union, Intersect and Except operators, which all rely on consistent sorting between the back-end server and the Siebel Analytics Server.

Example: SORT_ORDER_LOCALE = "english-usa" ;

SORT_ORDER_LOCALE Under UNIX Operating Systems

The Analytics Server sets the C-runtime locale during server startup. A value for the setting is specified using the SORT_ORDER_LOCALE entry in the NQSConfig.INI file. See the topic Setting SORT_ORDER_LOCALE Under UNIX.

SORT_TYPE

Specifies the type of sort to perform. The default value is BINARY. Binary sorts are faster than nonbinary sorts.

Valid values are BINARY and DEFAULT. If you specify DEFAULT, a nonbinary sort is performed; this yields better sort results for data that contains accented characters.

Example: SORT_TYPE = "BINARY" ;

CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON

Specifies whether the Siebel Analytics Server differentiates between uppercase and lowercase characters when performing comparison operations.

Valid values are ON and OFF. When set to OFF, case is ignored. When set to ON, case is considered for comparisons. For binary sorts, case sensitivity for the server and for the relational database should set the same way.

This setting affects all comparisons that occur within the Siebel Analytics Server. The following operators are affected:

  • Order By
  • Group By
  • Distinct
  • Join
  • comparisons (<, >, =, <=, >=, <>)

For example, consider the following three terms:

  • ACME
  • DELTA
  • acme

An Order By with case-sensitive setting results in rows in the order shown in the preceding example. An Order By with case-insensitive setting results in ACME and acme being adjacent.

If the term is case-sensitive and you perform a duplicate remove (Distinct), the result is three rows. If the term is not case-sensitive, then the Distinct result is two rows.

CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON should be set to correspond with how the back-end database deals with case. For example, if the back-end database is case-insensitive, then Siebel Analytics Server should be configured to be case-insensitive. If Siebel Analytics Server and the back-end database are not similarly case-sensitive, some subtle problems can result.

Example: CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON = OFF ;

NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST

Specifies if NULL values sort before other values (ON) or after (OFF). ON and OFF are the only valid values. The value of NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST should conform to the underlying database. If there are multiple underlying databases that sort NULL values differently, set the value to correspond to the database that is used the most in queries.

Example: NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST= OFF ;

DATE_TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how date/time stamps are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

Example: DATE_TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "yyyy/mm/dd hh:mi:ss" ;

DATE_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how dates are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

NOTE:  Specify the year as either 2-digit (yy) or 4-digit (yyyy). Separators can be any character except y, m, or d.

Example: DATE_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "yyyy/mm/dd" ;

TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how times are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

Example: TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "hh:mi:ss" ;

WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS

Specifies one or more directories for temporary space.

Each directory listed needs to be an existing fully-qualified, writable directory pathname, with double quotes ( " ) surrounding the pathname. Specify mapped directories only. UNC path names and network mapped drives are allowed only if the service runs under a qualified user account. To change the account under which the service is running, see the topic Changing the Account Under Which a Windows Service Runs.

Specify multiple directories with a comma separated list. Valid values are any fully qualified pathname to an existing, writable directory.

For optimum performance, temporary directories should reside on high performance storage devices. If you specify more than one directory, they should reside on different drives.

Syntax: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "<full_directory_path_1>" [, "<full_directory_path_2>"{, "<full_directory_path_n>"}] ;

Example 1: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "C:\Temp" ;

Example 2: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "D:\temp", "F:\temp" ;

NOTE:  Specifying more than one directory per drive does not improve performance because file I/O takes place through the same I/O controller. In general, specify only one directory per disk drive. Specifying multiple directories on different drives improves the overall I/O throughput of the Siebel Analytics Server because internally, the processing files are allocated using a round-robin algorithm that balances the /O load across the given disk drives.

SORT_MEMORY_SIZE

Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used for each sort operation. Multiple operations can each use memory up to the value specified. The limit for SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is determined by the physical memory of the server machine and on the number of sort operations that might occur simultaneously. Specify KB for kilobytes, MB for megabytes, and no units for bytes.

Example: SORT_MEMORY_SIZE = 4 MB ;

Related Topic

See the topic How the SIZE Parameters Affect Siebel Analytics Performance.

SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE

Specifies the increment that the sort memory size is increased by as more memory is needed. As more memory is required, the size increases by the value specified until it reaches the value of SORT_MEMORY_SIZE.

Example: SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE = 256 KB ;

Related Topic

See the topic How the SIZE Parameters Affect Siebel Analytics Performance.

VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE

Specifies the size of a memory page for the Siebel Analytics Server internal processing. A higher value reduces I/O but increases memory usage, especially in a multiuser environment.

Example: VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE = 128 KB ;

Related Topic

See the topic How the SIZE Parameters Affect Siebel Analytics Performance.

  
Siebel Analytics Platform Installation and Configuration Guide