IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Services and service-related functions > Access external services with adapters > Configure and using adapters > IBM WebSphere Adapters > IBM i > Reference > Globalization

Globalization and bidirectional transformation

The adapter is globalized to support single- and multi-byte character sets and deliver message text in the specified language during outbound processing. The adapter also performs bidirectional transformation, which refers to the task of processing data that contains both right-to-left (Hebrew or Arabic, for example) and left-to-right (a URL or file path, for example) semantic content within the same file.


Globalization

Globalized software applications are designed and developed for use within multiple linguistic and cultural environments rather than a single environment. WebSphere Adapters, IBM Integration Designer, IBM BPM, and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus are written in Java™. The Java runtime environment within the Java virtual machine (JVM) represents data in the Unicode character code set. Unicode contains encoding for characters in most known character code sets (both single- and multi-byte). Therefore, when data is transferred between these integration system components, there is no need for character conversion.

To log error and informational messages in the appropriate language and for the appropriate country or region, the adapter uses the locale of the system on which it is running.

The adapter supports globalization for business objects and adapter foundation classes (AFC) related properties.

The inbound processing support provided by the adapter does not include polling of messages with globalized (non-English-language) characters from both keyed and simple data queues such as FIFO or LIFO.


Bidirectional transformation

Languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left, yet they contain embedded segments of text that are written left to right, resulting in bidirectional script. There are multiple ways that a software application might display and process bidirectional script. IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus uses the Windows standard format, but applications or file systems that exchange data with the server might use a different format. WebSphere Adapters transform bidirectional script data passed between the two systems so that it is accurately processed and displayed on both sides of a transaction.


Bidirectional format

IBM BPM and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus use the bidirectional format of ILYNN (implicit, left-to-right, on, off, nominal). This is the format used by Windows.

If an enterprise information system uses a different format, the adapter converts the format before introducing the data to IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus.

The bidirectional format consists of five attributes. When you set bidirectional properties, you assign values for each of these attributes. The attributes and settings are listed in the following table.

Bidirectional format attributes
Letter position Purpose Values Description Default setting
1 Order schema I Implicit (Logical) I
V Visual
2 Direction L Left-to-Right L
R Right-to-Left
C Contextual Left-to-Right
D Contextual Right-to-Left
3 Symmetric Swapping Y Symmetric swapping is on Y
N Symmetric swapping is off
4 Text Shaping S Text is shaped N
N Text is not shaped (Nominal)
I Initial shaping
M Middle shaping
F Final shaping
B Isolated shaping
5 Numeric Shaping H National (Hindi) N
C Contextual shaping
N Numbers are not shaped (Nominal)

The adapter transforms data into a logical, left-to-right format before sending the data to IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus.


Bidirectional properties that identify data for transformation

To identify business data that is subject to transformation, set the BiDiContext property. Do this by specifying values for each of the five bidirectional format attributes (listed in the preceding table) for the property.

Globalization


Related reference:

Bidirectional transformation in business objects

Properties enabled for bidirectional data transformation