Localizing Oracle BI Metadata

Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Objective
After completing this lesson, you should be able to configure
Oracle Business Intelligence metadata to support multilingual
environments.

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Business Challenges and Solution

Challenges:
Companies require multilingual support for global
deployments of Oracle Business Intelligence.
End users need to make decisions based on applications
and data presented in their own language.
Solution:
Add multilingual support to Oracle BI.

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Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Oracle BI Multilingual Support

Requires three types of configurations:
Repository metadata, such as presentation folders
Focus of this lesson

Database data, such as product names

Focus of next lesson

Report and dashboard metadata, such as chart labels

Covered in a separate course

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Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Configuring Oracle BI Metadata

Involves configuring names and descriptions of repository
metadata:
Uses a translation table to store language-specific names
and descriptions for metadata
Uses initialization blocks and variables to select the
preferred language of the user and the corresponding names
and descriptions

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Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

WEBLANGUAGE Session Variable

Is populated with two-letter lowercase language code when
user selects language during log in
Example: en for English

User selects language during login,

which populates the WEBLANGUAGE
session variable.

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LOCALE Session Variable

Specifies how data is returned from the server
Localizes message strings, such as names of days and
months

Default LOCALE is specified

in the NQSConfig.ini file.

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Changing Localization Preferences

Users can change WEBLANGUAGE and LOCALE preferences on
the My Account page.

LOCALE variable
WEBLANGUAGE variable

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ABC Example
Localize metadata to the French language.

Localized
Presentation layer

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Steps to Localize Metadata

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

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Externalize metadata objects.

Run the Externalize Strings utility.
Create a translation table.
Import the translation table.
Create an initialization block.
Modify My Account preferences.
Verify the translations.

Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

1. Externalize Metadata Objects

To set display variables, select Externalize Display Names or
Externalize Descriptions for each presentation catalog or table
that requires translation.

Name display variable

Description display variable

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2. Run the Externalize Strings Utility

Exports the names of the Presentation layer objects to a file
in comma-separated value, tab-delimited, or XML format
Externalizes the Presentation layer strings to enable set up
of local language translations for them

Presentation layer object

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Display variable

Presentation layer object string

Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

3. Create a Translation Table

Use file generated by the Externalize Strings utility to build
translation table with translated text:
Add row for each language and display variable.

Translation table must contain three required columns:

LANG_ID identifies the language.
MSG_NUM identifies the display variable to be translated.
MSG_TEXT contains the translated text.
Add row for each language
and display variable.

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4. Import the Translation Table

Import the translation table to the Physical layer to give Oracle
BI Server access to the translation information.

Import populated translation

table to the Physical layer.

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5. Create an Initialization Block

Create a row-wise initialization block that populates session
variables with values from the translation table based on the
value of WEBLANGUAGE.

Populates the MSG_NUM and

MSG_TEXT session variables
based on the WEBLANGUAGE
session variable

Row-wise initialization

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6. Modify My Account Preferences

Set locale or language on the My Account page.

Setting a locale automatically

selects the native language for
that locale.

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7. Verify the Translations

Verify that objects are translated as expected.
Metadata objects
translated

Check NQQuery.log and verify that the initialization block

issued a SQL query.

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Summary
In this lesson, you should have learned how to configure Oracle
BI metadata to support multilingual environments.

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Practice 14-1 Overview:

Localizing Repository Metadata
In the practice, you localize Oracle BI repository metadata.

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Copyright 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.