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Analysis Models - Translation Handling

This page deals with translation handling related to the IFS Analysis Models

General

The information in IFS Analysis Models is based on Access Views. These Access Views act as an extra access layer on top of existing Information Sources' views. For more information about Access Views, please use the following link >>.

IFS Cloud supports translation handling of metadata related to Information Sources. This typically means that the display name of a dimension or fact and its attributes can be translated to different languages using the standard translation principles. The translation support however only applies to IFS specific clients as e.g. IFS Business Reporter. This means that there is no built-in translation support in delivered tabular models. Translation of tabular models needs to be handled by using the translation support offered by Microsoft.

For other type of translations the following cases can be distinguished:

  1. Data related translations, i.e translation of attribute data as names and descriptions. These translation are retrieved via the Access Views and it is important to note that the language for the extracting user will decide the language.
  2. Data related to NLS settings in the Oracle session.

A tabular model does not support multiple languages when it comes to IFS Cloud related data translations.

The extracting user, i.e. the <IFSINFO> user, has a preferred language that is the primary choice. Then there is also a default language if the preferred language property is empty.

For all cases where a translated text is retrieved as a result of a call to the IFS Cloud translation framework, the following applies:

  • The translation framework figures out if the default or preferred language should apply for the current user, <IFSINFO>, and then defines it as the session language. This language is used when getting the translated texts during transfer from IFS Cloud to SQL Server. Thus, translatable data will be represented in the language according to the current session language.
  • If e.g. the <IFSINFO> user has language en (English) as the preferred/default language, translatable texts will be transferred as English texts.
  • A tabular model can be translated to different languages using tooling from Microsoft, meaning thatĀ attributes and labels in a model can be displayed in another language than English, e.g. in language fr (French). Even if a model is translated to French, the data translations will still be in English as long as the session language is English.
  • To synch translations, the model language and that data translation language must be the same.

    • Translations for the model must be available in the required language.
    • Data translations in IFS Cloud must be available in required language.
    • The preferred language for the <IFSINFO> user must be defined as the required language.
    • To get all data translated, which normally only affects dimension related attributes, a new data load must be made.

Some data is dependent on the NLS settings of the Oracle session that transfers the data.

The typical case is time dimensions where e.g. the name of the day, the name of the month and the day of the week will be affected by the NLS settings. Important NLS settings are NLS_LANGUAGE, NLS_TERRITORY and NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE.

  • In general, the language as well as the territory will be defined by the current NLS settings of the Oracle instance. In this case the territory is NOT defined by a property associated with the language of the extracting user. This means that e.g. if NLS_TERRITORY=SWEDEN, a Monday will be the 1st day of the week.
  • In order to get time dimension data according to another language or territory or character set than the one defined by the current Oracle NLS parameters, it is recommended to use the environment system variable NLS_LANG.

E.g Setting NLS LANG to AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 e.g. means that a Monday will be the 2nd day of the week.

Translation of Tabular Models

Translations of a Tabular Model can be handled by using the support that is provided in SQL Server Data Tools.

E.g. search for Translation in tabular models in Microsoft online documentation.