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About the Transcode Service Business Service


This topic is part of About Integration Considerations.

To supplement the character conversion performed by Siebel EAI components, Siebel Business Applications offer the Transcode Service business service. You can use methods of this business service in your workflow processes to validate and convert data from one character set encoding to another.

For information about how business services handle character conversion errors, see About Character Conversion Errors. For the language-independent code values that you can specify in business service method arguments for the source or target encoding, see Article ID 1513102.1 (for version 8.1.1.x) or Article ID 1524342.1 (for version 8.2.2.x) on My Oracle Support.

The Transcode Service business service supports two methods:

  • Validate. This method confirms the input property set hierarchy or the value of the input property set. You can use this method to check that a character is valid within a particular character set before proceeding, without actually performing the conversion. The arguments for the Validate method are described in Table 6.
    Table 6. Arguments for Validate Method
    Method Argument
    Required
    Description

    ValidationMode

    Yes

    If set to value, then only the value is validated. Otherwise, the properties are validated for the entire hierarchy.

    TargetEncoding

    Yes

    Specify the language-independent code for the target encoding.

    SourceEncoding

    No

    Specify the language-independent code for the source encoding.

    This argument is required when ValidationMode is set to value and the input value contains binary data. Conversion from binary data in SourceEncoding to binary data in TargetEncoding is implied.

  • Convert. This method converts the value in the input property set to the target encoding in the output. You use this method when data is entering or leaving Siebel applications, and a conversion is required now, so that the next software component in the processing chain can recognize the data. The arguments for the Convert method are described in Table 7.

    NOTE:  To ignore character conversion errors (that is, invalid character errors or substitution errors) for the Convert method, specify IgnoreConversionErrors = True as a method argument. Otherwise, do not use this argument. (This argument is hidden in Siebel Tools.)

    Table 7. Arguments for Convert Method
    Method Argument
    Required
    Description

    ConversionMode

    Yes

    Values can be StringToEncoding, EncodingToString, or EncodingToEncoding.

    TargetEncoding

    Yes

    Specify the language-independent code for the target encoding.

    Required for StringToEncoding and EncodingToEncoding modes.

    SourceEncoding

    No

    Specify the language-independent code for the source encoding.

    Required for EncodingToString and EncodingToEncoding modes.

    NOTE:  The Convert method converts the actual encoding of a file, including XML files. However, this method does not change the encoding attribute in the file's XML header. For example, if you change an XML file's encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-16, then the XML header still refers to UTF-8, such as in this example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>. To make the encoding attribute match the XML file's actual encoding, edit the file in a separate step.

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