23 Implementing Globalization and Bidirectional Support

When you design reports to be deployed to different countries, you must consider such things as character sets and text reading order. Oracle Reports Services includes the support that you require to address any issues related to these considerations: Globalization support for character sets and bidirectional support for text reading order.

Globalization support makes it possible to design applications that can be deployed in several different languages. Oracle supports most European, Middle Eastern, and Asian languages. globalization support enables you to:

• Use international character sets (including multibyte character sets)

• Display data according to the appropriate language and territory conventions

• Extract strings that appear in your interface and translate them

Bidirectional support enables you to display data in either a left-to-right or right-to-left orientation, depending on the requirements of your audience.

This chapter provides a look at globalization support architecture, including globalization support settings relevant to Reports; explains how to specify character sets in a JSP; and offers information on bidirectional, Unicode, and translation support. It includes the following main sections:

• Globalization Support Architecture

• Globalization Support Environment Variables

• Specifying a Character Set in a JSP or XML File

• Bidirectional Support

• Unicode

• Translating Applications

• Troubleshooting Globalization Issues