2 Localizing Oracle Business Intelligence Deployments

Oracle Business Intelligence is designed to allow users to dynamically change their preferred language and locale preferences. You can configure Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (Oracle BI Applications) for deployment in one or more language environments other than English.

Topics:

• Maintaining Translation Tables Workflow for Oracle BI EE

• About Translating Presentation Services Strings

• Changing the Default Currency in Analytics Applications

Maintaining Translation Tables Workflow for Oracle Analytics

The Oracle Analytics Presentation layer supports multiple translations for any column name. When working with Oracle BI Answers or rendering a dashboard, users see their local language strings in their reports.

For example, English-speaking and French-speaking users would see their local language strings in their reports. There are two kinds of application strings requiring translation:

• Metadata

  Metadata strings are analytics-created objects in the repository such as subject areas, metrics, and dimensions.

• Presentation Services

  Presentation Services objects are end-user created objects such as reports, dashboards, and pages. Translations for Presentation Services strings are stored in the XML caption files. .

Adding String Localizations for Oracle BI Repository Metadata

If you added a new domain member, you can add string localizations in the Oracle BI Repository metadata.

1. Stop the BI Services.

   Go to [ORACLE_HOME]/user_projects/domains/bi/bitools/bin and use the command: ./stop.sh.

2. Open a database administration tool, and connect to the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse schema.
3. Identify the strings for the following presentation objects:
   • Subject area
   • Presentation table
   • Presentation hierarchy
   • Presentation level
   • Presentation column

   For example, for the subject area Payables Invoices - Prepayment Invoice Distributions Real Time, enter the following strings:

   String	Presentation Object
   Payables Invoices - Prepayment Invoice Distributions Real Time	Subject area
   Time	Presentation table
   Date - Year	Presentation hierarchy
   Total	Presentation level
   Year	Presentation level
   Calendar Year	Presentation column

4. For each subject area, externalize the strings for localization and generate custom names for the presentation objects:
   1. In the Oracle BI Administration Tool, right-click the subject area and select Externalize Display Names, and then select Generate Custom Names.
   2. Save your work.

   See Administering Oracle Analytics Server.

5. Check the consistency of the repository, and remove any inconsistencies.

   See Managing Metadata Repositories for Oracle Analytics Server.

6. Enter the custom name of one of the presentation objects into the table C_RPD_MSGS:

   INSERT INTO C_RPD_MSGS(MSG_ID, CREATED_BY, CREATION_DATE)
   VALUES('<CUSTOM NAME OF PRESENTATION OBJECT>', 'CUSTOM', SYSTIMESTAMP);
   COMMIT;
   

   To view the values for custom names and logical columns in the Oracle BI Administration Tool, right-click the presentation object and select Properties. The data in the Custom display name field appears in the format VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.VALUE, where VALUE is the custom name for a presentation object, or the logical value for a presentation column. This value is the value that you need to enter in the VALUES section of the SQL statement above.

7. Enter the localized string for the presentation object in the previous step into the table C_RPD_MSGS_TL:

   INSERT INTO C_RPD_MSGS_TL(MSG_ID, MSG_TEXT, LANGUAGE_CODE, CREATED_BY, CREATION_DATE)
   VALUES('<CUSTOM NAME OF PRESENTATION OBJECT>', '<LOCALIZATION OF THE STRING'>, '<LANGUAGE CODE FOR TRANSLATED LANGUAGE>', 'CUSTOM', SYSTIMESTAMP);
   COMMIT;
   

   To identify the language code for a particular language, use the following SQL:

   SELECT LANGUAGE_CODE, NLS_LANGUAGE, NLS_TERRITORY
   FROM FND_LANGUAGES_B
   WHERE INSTALLED_FLAG IN ('B', 'I');
   

8. Enter additional details about the presentation object into the table C_RPD_MSGS_REL as indicated by the following SQL:

   INSERT INTO C_RPD_MSGS_REL(MSG_ID, MSG_NUM, MESSAGE_TYPE, CREATED_BY, CREATION_DATE)
   VALUES('<CUSTOM NAME OF PRESENTATION OBJECT>', '<TRANSLATION OF THE STRING'>, '<LANGUAGE CODE FOR TRANSLATED LANGUAGE>', 'METADATA','CUSTOM', SYSTIMESTAMP);
   COMMIT;
   

9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 for each presentation object requiring localization.
10. Validate that the physical connection of the session initialization block INIT_USER_LANGUAGE_CODE is operable:
    1. In the Oracle BI Administration Tool, select Manage, Variables, Session Initialization Block.
    2. Right-click INIT_USER_LANGUAGE_CODE.
    3. In the Properties dialog, click Edit Data Source.
    4. Click Test, and input the value for the language code. Then, click OK.

       For example, for Arabic enter 'AR'.

       The value USER_LANGUAGE_CODE = '<language code>' should be returned.

       If this value is not returned, the TNS entry for the data source is not properly configured.

11. Restart the BI services.

    Go to [ORACLE_HOME]/user_projects/domains/bi/bitools/bin and use the command: ./start.sh.

12. Verify the localized strings in Oracle BI Answers. On the login page, specify the appropriate language.

About Translating Presentation Services Strings

The translations for such Presentation Services objects as report and page names are copied to this location during the Oracle BI Applications installation process: SDD/service_instances/service1/metadata/content/msgdb/l_language_abbreviation/captions, where SDD is the Singleton Data Directory for example, DOMAIN_HOME/bidata. In multiple language deployment mode, if you add any additional Presentation Services objects, such as reports and new dashboard pages, you also need to add the appropriate translations.

Add these translations using the Catalog Manager tool. See Administering Oracle Analytics Server.

Changing the Default Currency in Oracle BI Applications

In Oracle BI Applications, you might see a dollar sign used as the default symbol when amounts of money are displayed.

To change this behavior, you must edit the currencies.xml file. The currencies.xml file is located in the following directories:

• Windows: ORACLE_HOME\bi\bifoundation\web\display\currencies.xml

• UNIX: ORACLE_HOME/bi/bifoundation/web/display/currencies.xml

To change the default currency in Analytics Applications:

1. In a text editor, open the currencies.xml file.
2. Look for the currency tag for the warehouse default (tag="int:wrhs"):

   <Currency tag="int:wrhs" type="international" symbol="$" format="$#" digits="2"
   displayMessage="kmsgCurrencySiebelWarehouse">
      <negative tag="minus" format="-$#" />
   </Currency>
   

3. Replace the symbol, format, digits and negative information in the warehouse default with the information from the currency tag you want to use as the default.

   For example, if you want the Japanese Yen to be the default, replace the contents of the warehouse default currency tag with the values from the Japanese currency tag (tag="loc:ja-JP"):

   <Currency tag="loc:ja-JP" type="local" symbol="©" locale="ja-JP" format="$#"
   digits="0">
      <negative tag="minus" format="-$#" />
   </Currency>
   

   When you are finished, the default warehouse currency tag for Japanese should look like the following example:

   <Currency tag="int:wrhs" type="international" symbol="©" format="$#" digits="0"
   displayMessage="kmsgCurrencySiebelWarehouse">
      <negative tag="minus" format="-$#" /> 
   </Currency>
   

4. Save and close the currencies.xml file.