Cognos Series 7 Version 5 - Using Unsupported Locales

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Disclaimer
Cognos supports over 300 locale combinations for 57 countries, 23 languages and 28 data encodings across 5 platforms as shown on the Supported Locales, Character Sets and Languages web page. All other locale combinations are deemed unsupported, although they may work by manually configuring the product. For unsupported locales, Cognos does not warrant that the product will perform in accordance with specifications. Cognos assumes no responsibility for defect correction, enhancements or improvements to the products related to the use of product capabilities in unsupported locales. A problem will only be investigated by Cognos if a test case can be provided that reproduces the problem in a supported locale. The customer accepts the use of the Cognos products "as-is".

Cognos Series 7 Version 5 Instructions:
Note: These instructions apply only to Cognos Series 7 Version 5, and any of its Maintenance Releases.

On Windows the localemap.xml file can be found in the \Cer4\Bin and \Cer4\cgi-bin directories. On Unix this file can be found in the /cer4/bin and /cer4/cgi-bin directories.

1. In both locations, copy localemap.xml file to localemap_backup.xml.
2. Stop all Cognos services on the computer.
3. Modify one of the localemap.xml files in the directories named above; following the instructions documented in the localemap.xml file.
4. Copy the localemap.xml file that you have modified to the other directory named above.
5. Start all Cognos services on the computer.
6. Using Configuration Manager, navigate to the Cognos Shared | Locale section and select the required Locale and Encoding properties, e.g., ru and windows-1251.
7. Apply Configuration Manager setting.
8. Select the Server Configuration tab, and click the "Create the server configuration (cer4.csx) file".
9. Verify that the appropriate settings appear in cer4.ini, for example:
   
   [Locale]
   localekey=ru
   nativelocale=rus_rus.1251
   encoding=windows-1251
   On Windows this file can be found in the \Cer6\Bin.
   On Unix this file can be found in the /cer6/bin.
   
   
10. Verify that appropriate Encoding is set in cer6.csx, for example:
    
    < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1251"?>
    
    On Windows this file can be found in the \Cer6\Bin. On Unix this file can be found in the /cer6/bin.
    
    
11. Verify that the encodings in cer6.csx and cer6.ini match. If they do not match, then set the encoding in the cer6.csx file to the values found in the cer4.ini file.
    
    If they do not match you may see, for example, a PowerPlay Web error such as *ERROR: Unhandled ISA_STATUS caught in ppserver.

Specific Locales
You cannot add any additional locales to this file manually with the expectation that Cognos products will process them at all. Only the following specific locales and encodings are included in the file:

af - Afrikaans
be - Belarusia
bg - Bulgarian
et - Estonia
eu - Basque
fo - Faeroese
hr - Croatian
id - Indonesian
is - Icelandic
ru - Russian
sl - Slovenian
sq - Albanian
sr - Serbian
uk - Ukrainian

Fonts
To use PDF-based reports ensure that you use Configuration Manager to specify the configuration of an appropriate Default Font that support the characters of your chosen locale. Specify the Default Font in the Services | PDF Rendering | Font Paths section in Configuration Manager.

Compatibility between operating system settings and data
You must configure your operating system locale and encoding (code-page) with a compatible encoding as the single encoding of your data. As with Cognos supported locales, you can only use characters from a single encoding at any one time, even if your database is configured with Unicode capable data types such as NCHAR or NVARCHAR.

Example: Using Cyrillic and English data on a Russian Windows operating system
To display Cyrillic and English data when using Cognos products, the operating system must be configured to be Russian via the Control Panel Regional Settings. This action performs a "setlocale" operation that is compatible with the windows-1251 encoding. The use of the windows-1251 encoding allows Cyrillic characters to be read and written, plus the display and movement of basic Latin characters (A-Z, a-z). Additional characters that are supported in the windows-1252 encoding are NOT supported in the windows-1251 encoding. This means that many characters used in European languages are not supported. It is not possible to either READ or WRITE a mixture of French, German and Russian. For example, when the data contains characters accented with graves, acutes, umlauts etc. If these characters are located in the data, Cognos data access engine (UDA) will report error number -6.