B.1 Internationalization and Multibyte Data Support on Oracle Access Manager

Access Manager provides multi-lingual applications and software products that can be accessed and run anywhere simultaneously, without modification, while rendering content in the native user's language and locale preferences.

A locale is the linguistic and cultural environment in which a system or program is running; data associated with a locale provides support for formatting and parsing of dates, times, numbers, currencies, and the like based on the linguistic and cultural requirements that corresponds to a given language and country.

Oracle product globalization is a two part process that includes internationalization and localization. Internationalization (sometimes shortened to "I18N", meaning "I - eighteen letters -N") requires that software products and applications must be usable on a computer running any supported operating system (in any supported language), with non-US keyboards or other country-specific hardware. Oracle applications do not have hard-coded dependencies on language strings, and inter-operate with non-US versions of other products. Oracle applications can handle multibyte characters and differences in a distributed environment, and also being able to detect the user's desired locale. Access Manager meets these requirements and conforms to Unicode Standard 4.0.

Localization includes translation of separated file text. In Oracle products, information is presented in a manner that is consistent with the user's local cultural conventions, including data formatting, collation, currency, date, time, and directionality of text (right-to-left or left-to-right), as discussed next.

For more information, see:

B.1.1 Languages For Localized Messages

Translatable information can be categorized into two types: end-user information (accessible to all users) and administrative information (for users with Administrator privileges). When you install Oracle Access Manager 10.1.4 without a Language Pack, English is the default language for Administrators and end users. When you install 10.1.4 with Oracle-provided Language Packs, you can choose the language to be used as the default for Administrative activities. Regardless of the default Administrator language you choose during installation, English is always installed.

Note:

Messages added for minor releases (10g (10.1.4.2.0) and 10g (10.1.4.3) as a result of new functionality might not be translated and can appear in only English.

For end-users, the display of static application data is provided in the End Users languages identified in Table B-1: error messages, and display names for tabs, panels, and properties. Administrative information can be displayed in only the Administrators languages listed in Table B-1. If administrative pages are requested in any other language (by the browser setting), the language that was selected as the default during product installation is used to display the pages.

Table B-1 Languages for Localized Messages

Language Tag for Installation Directory End User Information Administrators

en-us

English

English

ar-ar

Arabic

 

pt-br

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese

fr-ca

Canadian French

 

cs-cs

Czech

 

da-dk

Danish

 

nl-nl

Dutch

 

fi-fi

Finnish

 

fr-fr

French

French

de-de

German

German

el-gr

Greek

 

he-il

Hebrew

 

hu-hu

Hungarian

 

it-it

Italian

Italian

ja-jp

Japanese

Japanese

ko-kr

Korean

Korean

es-mx

Latin American Spanish

 

no-no

Norwegian

 

pl-pl

Polish

 

pt-pt

Portuguese

 

ro-ro

Romanian

 

ru-ru

Russian

 

zh-cn

Simplified Chinese

Simplified Chinese

sk-sk

Slovak

 

es-es

Spanish/Spain

Spanish

sv-sv

Swedish

 

th-th

Thai

 

zh-tw

Traditional Chinese

Traditional Chinese

tr-tr

Turkish

 

B.1.2 Bi-directional Language Support

Most Western languages are written left to right (LTR), from the top of the page to the bottom. East Asian languages are usually written top to bottom, from the right side of the page to the left (RTL)—although exceptions are frequently made for technical books translated from Western languages.

Some languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic, are written and read predominantly from right to left. Numbers reverse direction in Arabic and Hebrew. While the text is written right to left, numbers within the sentence are written left to right with the most significant digit on the left, as in European and other LTR languages.

When LTR languages are mixed in with RTL languages, the complete document or content is considered bi-directional. Access Manager can support bi-directional languages. If the browser on the host computer is configured to use any bi-directional language, then Access Manager handles it properly.

Note:

No administrative languages require bi-directional support.

To provide support for multiple languages and bi-directional languages, Access Manager 10.1.4 supports the Unicode standard for encoding.

Note:

Writing direction does not affect the encoding of a character. Regardless of the writing direction, Oracle stores data in logical order—the order used by someone typing a language—rather than the order in which it is presented on the screen.

B.1.3 UTF-8 Encoding

UTF-8 encoding and support is provided automatically, whether you have a new 10.1.4 installation or upgrade an older installation to Access Manager. You do not need to make any changes to your environment. As with previous releases, data in the directory server is stored with UTF-8 encoding.

Note:

All of your directory data is UTF-8 format. Access Manager does not support a mix of data types in the directory.