Set the locale and character encoding on target computers

Globalization settings are automatically set for physical operational servers during installation. For operational servers with virtual configurations, there are some settings that you must manually make after installation.

Unicode settings are made when you run the create database script applicable for your database type. Language settings are made during the installation. Use this procedure to set any additional settings for operational servers if you plan to implement a language other than US English.

Log files that are created by the operational server are in ASCII encoding. Code points that are not encompassed by ASCII are in the standard Unicode form of U+XXXX.

Ensure that the following Unicode items were set by the create database script:
  • Microsoft SQL Server: new MAD_DBTYPE is “mssqlu”
  • Oracle: CREATE DATABASE dname…CHARACTER SET AL32UTF8. You must also set the character length semantics for Unicode. Set the variable NLS_LANG_SEMANTICS to CHAR (the default setting is BYTE). Use the command:
    ALTER SYSTEM SET NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS=CHAR SCOPE=BOTH

    If you are using a non-wire connect driver with an Oracle client, you must also set this variable for the user who is connecting to the operational server. (A non-wire connect driver uses Oracle client libraries.)
    NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8

  • IBM DB2®: CREATE DATABASE dname USING CODESET UTF-8 TERRITORY territory code. For example: create database prod using codeset UTF-8 territory us, where prod is the database name and us is the territory.

After you install the MDM operational server, you must manually set the MAD_ENCODING variable for your virtual MDM configuration. This variable is set in the com.ibm.mdm.mds.jni.cfg configuration file.

Translated strings are stored in the /smt directory. These files, such as fr_FR.smt or en_US.smt, contain the interaction messages that are returned to clients. To set the language for the translated strings, you must also set the MAD_SMTLIST environment variable in the com.initiate.server.system.cfg configuration file. This variable points to the appropriate *.smt file. If you use multiple languages, you can separate the languages with a comma in the variable property.

When the MAD_SMTLIST option is set to multiple languages (smtcode), the operational server can potentially load multiple languages (strings) at one time. However, the InfoSphere® MDM components display the strings for only one language at a time. For example, the same operational server is configured to send a French client French messages and an English client English messages.

If client software is not configured to use an alternative language, only operational server level information is returned in the chosen language. Translation or globalization of the data that is stored in the MDM database, such as dates, are not converted when displayed in user applications. Rather, this information displays in the locale in which it was received from the source.