15
Globalization

This chapter includes the following sections:

• Section 15.1, "Overview"

• Section 15.2, "Determining a User's Locale"

• Section 15.3, "Determining the Encoding of a Device"

15.1 Overview

Oracle Application Server Wireless supports multi-locale and multi-encoding. The Wireless server dynamically determines locale and request and response encoding based on the runtime context.

15.2 Determining a User's Locale

The Wireless Server dynamically determines the appropriate locale of a user by using such locale information as PALocale, the user's preferred locale, the Accept Language header, and the site locale.

PAlocale is a HTTP parameter that specifies the preferred value before login. The possible value for the PAlocale parameter follows the http accept-language header format. For example, PAlocale = en-US. This format is distinct from the java locale format (en_US).

The user's preferred locale is the language preference of a Wireless user, which is set with the User Manager. For more information, see Section 4.5 in Chapter 4, "Managing Users".

The Accept Language header is an HTTP protocol parameter that user agents (Web browsers) send with HTTP requests.

Note: For information on the HTTP accept-language header format, see the HTTP specification of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The Site Locale is an instance-wide default locale of the Wireless Server. For more information, see Section 15.2.4.

15.2.1 After Login

After login, the Wireless Server respects the user's preferred locale.

15.2.2 Before Login

Before login, the Wireless Web Server (ptg/rm), Async Listener, the Wireless Tools and the Customization Portal each determine the appropriate locale of a user's device.

Table 15-1 illustrates how the Async Listener, the WirelessWeb Server, the Wireless Tools and the Customization Portal determine the locale of a user. The numeric value indicates the preference for the detection methods in descending order.

Table 15-1 Locale Determination

Method	Async Listner	Wireless Web Sever (ptg/rm)	Wireless Tools and Customization Portal
Locale of the registered user or virtual user	1	1	1
HTTP parameter: PAlocale	N/A	2	N/A
Accept-language http header	N/A	3	N/A
Site default locale	2	4	2

15.2.2.1 Wireless Web Server

The Wireless Web Server (ptg/rm) determines the locale of a user in the following order:

1. Use PAlocale (if present).

2. Use the user's preferred locale if the connecting user can be identified through the device id.

3. Use the Accept_Language HTTP header (if present).

4. Use the site default locale.

15.2.2.2 The Wireless Tools and Customization Portal

The Wireless Tools and Customization Portal determine the location of a user in the following order:

1. Use PAlocale (if present).

2. Use the site default locale.

15.2.2.3 Async Listener

The Async Listner determines the location of a user in the following order:

1. Use the user's preferred locale if the connecting user can be identified through the device ID.

2. Use the site default locale. For more information, see Section 15.2.4.

15.2.3 Setting the Locale for a User Profile

You can set a preferred location for a user when you create a user or edit a user profile. If the preferred location is not specified, then the default site locale is used. For more information, see Section 4.5.1.1 in Chapter 4, "Managing Users".

15.2.4 Setting the Site Locale

From the Site Administration screen of the System Manager (accessed through the Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control), you can specify the default site locale and add to the list of locales that the site can support. Use a java locale (such as en_US) when adding to the list of supported locales (depicted in Figure 15-1). For more information, see Section 3.6.1.4 in Chapter 3, "Managing the Wireless Server".

Note: You can also set the site locale using the Basic Site Configuration wizard, accessed from the Home page of the System Manager. For more information, see Section 3.3.1 in Chapter 3, "Managing the Wireless Server".

Figure 15-1 The Site Locale Screen of the System Manager (Partial View)

Text description of the illustration loc_smsl.gif

15.3 Determining the Encoding of a Device

The content encoding of a logical device is used to transport of the result of the device type. The default encoding for all of the devices that ship with Wireless is set to UTF-8. The encoding format of a device is that of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

Using the Foundation Manager, you can edit the browser capabilities of a device in the Wireless repository to update it to the encoding appropriate to a given country or locale (Figure 15-2). For more information on creating, cloning, or editing a device, see Section 7.3.2, Section 7.3.3, and Section 7.3.2.1, respectively, in Chapter 7, "Managing Foundation Services".

Figure 15-2 Editing the Encoding for a Device (Partial View of the Editing Function)

Text description of the illustration loc_edua.gif

The following table illustrates how the encoding is determined.

Table 15-2 Determining the Device Encoding

Component	Factor
Multi-Channel Server	The encoding of the requesting device.
Async Listener	Determined by the corresponding transport driver.
Wireless Tools and Customization Portal	Encoding of the device called `PAPZ'. The default encoding is UTF-8.
Module Application	Use UTF-8 for reading the request and writing the response.
Notification Application	Determined by the corresponding transport driver.

15.3.1 HttpAdapter - Based Service

This section describes the encoding for the request and response of a HTTPAdapter-based application

15.3.1.1 Encoding for the request of an HTTPAdapter-based Application

When sending the HTTP request to the remote content provider, only the parameters of the HTTPAdapter application are encoded using the input_encoding of the application (if it is specified). Use the encoding format of the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) when specifying the value for input_encoding.

15.3.1.2 Encoding for the response of an HTTPAdapter-based Application

Wireless determines the encoding of the response of an HTTPAdapter-based application in the following order:

1. Charset as part of the content-type header on the response.

2. Input-encoding (if present) of the input parameter of the application.

3. ISO-8859-1 (the default).

15.4 Languages Available for On-Line Help

Users can view the online help for the Wireless Tool and the Customization Portal in 29 languages. The site locale, configured through the System Manager, determines the display language. For more information, see Section 3.6.1.4 in Chapter 3, "Managing the Wireless Server".

In this release, the built-in labels and on-line help for the Wireless Tools and System Manager display in nine languages.

The Multi-Channel Server (ptg/rm) can display the built-in labels in 29 different languages.

15.5 Driver Encoding

Each driver handles encoding individually .