The GLS feature

In a database application, some of the tasks that the database server and the client application perform depend on the language and culture conventions of the data that they handle.

For example, the database server must sort U.S. English data differently from Chinese character data.

If the HCL Informix® database server or client product included the code to perform these data-dependent tasks, each would need to be written specially to handle a different set of culture-specific data.

With support for GLS, HCL Informix® products no longer need to specify how to process culture-specific information directly. Culture-specific information is in a GLS locale. When the HCL Informix® product needs culture-specific information, it calls the GLS library, which accesses the GLS locale and returns the information to the HCL Informix® product.

The GLS feature is a portable way to support culture-specific information. Although many operating systems provide support for non-English data, this support is usually in a form that is specific to the operating system. Not many standards yet exist for the format of culture-specific information. This lack of conformity means that if you move an application from one operating-system environment to another, you might need to change the way in which the application requests language support from the operating system. You might even find that the new operating-system environment does not provide the same aspect of language support that the initial environment provided.

The GLS feature can access culture-specific information about a UNIX™ or Windows™ operating system. HCL Informix® products can locate the locale information about any platform to which they are ported.

In order for GLS to support a nondefault locale, the version of Windows™ that you are using must also support that locale. That is, you cannot support a Chinese client application on Windows™ unless that application is running on the Chinese version of Windows™.

To use the GLS feature, the tasks that you must perform depend on whether you are a system administrator, database administrator, user of a client application, user of a database server utility, or client application developer. The following table lists these optional and mandatory tasks.