System and method for the support of multilingual applications

• US 20060004738A1
• Filed: 07/02/2004
• Published: 01/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LinkedIn Corporation (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: McCully, Eric, Ferguson, Kevin M., Potter, Charles M., Cazemier, Hendrik, Blackwell, Richard F., Godfrey, Lee Daw-Yong, Lacoursiere, Guy, Tennier, Claude, Leese, Kenneth R., Salter, Wayne C.
• Granted Patent: US 7,818,282 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/454 Multi-language systems; Localisation; Internationalisation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

The invention enhances business intelligence systems by allowing both report authors and consumers (users of reports) operating in their individual choice of interface language to have full access to content (data) in that language, or in any one of a number of languages. This functionality is provided by the inclusion of at least two locales. The invention provides for defining locale mappings, mapping a locale from an unsupported locale to supported locale, defaulting to a valid locale for users with incomplete or invalid locale specifications, and for specifying object names, descriptions, and tips in multiple languages. Report authors do not need to know in advance which locale is to be used and this makes their job simpler

Claims

1. A method for producing reports in a computer-based business intelligence application using client-server technology, having at least one client, and employing a data access language to retrieve business data from one or more data sources, the method comprising the steps of:

presenting a report author user with a list of valid product locales;

accepting from the report author user a selected product locale;

presenting a localized user interface, determined by the selected product locale, to the user, thereby allowing the report author user to work in the language of their choice;

generating a report specification;

deploying the report specification;

presenting a consumer user with a list of valid content locales;

accepting from the consumer user a selected content locale;

running the report using the report specification, the selected content locale, and the one or more data sources to produce a report output; and

displaying the report output.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the steps of:

accepting from the report author user a selected product locale;

are replaced by the step of;

accepting a default locale as a selected product locale.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the client has a locale, and further including the step of:

defining a default locale as the locale of the client.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of:

accepting from the consumer user a selected content locale;

is replaced by the step of;

accepting a default locale as a selected content locale.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the client has a locale, and further including the step of:

defining a default locale as the locale of the client.

6. The method of claim 1 including the steps of:

caching the selected content locale; and

caching the selected product locale.

7. The method of claim 1 includes the steps of:

saving the selected content locale as a first user preference; and

saving the selected product locale as a second user preference.

8. The method of claim 1 includes the step of:

adjusting the appearance of objects of the user interface of the business intelligence application, in accordance with the selected product locale.

9. The method of claim 1 including the step of:

replacing any invalid selected content locale or selected product locale before it is used by a mapped arbitrary value that is valid.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the report displaying report step includes the step of:

formatting dates, times, numbers and other numeric data in accordance with the content locale.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of:

accepting from the consumer user a selected content locale;

further includes the steps of;

accepting from the consumer user one or more parameters that affect the data to be used in the report; and

including the one or more parameters in a data access statement used in running the report.

11. The method of claim 11 wherein the data access language is SQL.

13. A system for producing reports in a computer-based business application using client-server technology, having at least one client, and employing a data access language to retrieve business data from one or more data sources, the system comprising:

means for presenting a report author user with a list of valid product locales;

means for accepting from the report author user a selected product locale, thereby determining the localized user interface at a client for authoring and using report specifications;

means for presenting a localized user interface to the report author user, thereby allowing the report author user to work in the language of their choice;

means for generating a report specification;

means for deploying the report specification;

means for presenting a consumer user with a list of valid content locales;

means for accepting from the consumer user a selected content locale, thereby determining the data in the one or more data sources to be used in the report resulting from applying the report specification and the format of the resulting report;

means for running the report using the report specification, the selected content locale, and the one or more data sources to produce a report output; and

means for displaying the report output.