Internationalized programs with Informix GLS

You can make HCL Informix® database applications easily adaptable to any culture and language.

Design the application so that the tasks in the following table do not make any assumptions about the language, territory, and code set that the application uses at run time. The data in a database that the application accesses should already be in a language that the end user can understand.
Table 1. Tasks for a database application
Application task Description
User interfaces
  • Includes any text that is visible to end users, including menus, buttons, prompts, help text, status messages, error messages, and graphics.
  • Includes translating the character strings in any external resource or message files that the application uses.
Character processing Includes the following processing tasks:
  • Character classification
  • Character case conversion
  • Collation and sorting
  • Character versus byte processing
  • String traversal
  • Code-set conversion
Data formatting Includes any culture-specific formats for the following types of data:
  • Numeric
  • Monetary
  • Date
  • Time
Documentation Includes any explanatory material such as printed manuals, online documentation, and readme files.

An internationalized program dynamically obtains language-specific information for these application tasks. Therefore, one executable file for the application can support multiple languages.