IBM Support

Which languages can be used / applied in Controller?

Troubleshooting


Problem

Which languages can be user/applied inside Controller? In addition, which Windows Regional Settings are supported by Controller?

Symptom

TIP: For a full list of things to consider (when changing the Controller language) see separate IBM Technote #1688028.

Cause

There are two types of language settings inside Controller:

    (1) Application Language
    • This refers to the language of the words seen inside all the menu items (for example 'Company', 'Group', 'Maintain', 'Help' etc.)
    • This is restricted to 12 languages

    (2) Code language
    • This refers to items such as 'descriptions' (or 'names')
    • This can be any one of 29 languages.
    • NOTE: There are some extra restrictions when using Controller with an Oracle database.

In addition, there are also country-specific settings that are configured outside of Controller, specifically:
    (3) Regional Settings
    • These are configured inside the Windows 'Control Panel'

Resolving The Problem

The following list of languages are available inside the application (correct as of Controller 10.1.1):

  • IMPORTANT: Older versions of Controller support fewer languages.

(1) Application language - used for the translation of the menu items, or Data Marts.

The end user can configure this to be one of the following 12:
  1. English
  2. Swedish
  3. German
  4. Spanish
  5. French
  6. Portuguese
  7. Russian
  8. Korean
  9. Chinese (Traditional)
  10. Chinese (Simplified)
  11. Italian
  12. Japanese.

(2) Code language - used for any account description, company name and so on

This can be:
  1. Afrikaans
  2. Albanian
  3. Arabic
  4. Basque
  5. Bulgarian
  6. Catalan
  7. Chinese
  8. Croatian
  9. Czech
  10. Danish
  11. Dutch
  12. English
  13. Estonian
  14. German
  15. Greek
  16. Finnish
  17. French
  18. Hebrew
  19. Hindi
  20. Hungarian
  21. Icelandic
  22. Indonesian
  23. Italian
  24. Japanese
  25. Korean
  26. Latvian
  27. Lithuanian
  28. Macedonian
  29. Malay
  30. Norwegian
  31. Polish
  32. Portuguese
  33. Raeto-Romance
  34. Romanian
  35. Russian
  36. Serbian
  37. Slovak
  38. Slovenian
  39. Spanish
  40. Swedish
  41. Thai
  42. Turkish
  43. Vietnamese.

Special notes if using an Oracle database
If using an Oracle database, please refer to statements on the official 'Cognos Controller Software Environments' web page (see link below).
  • For example, at the time of writing this Technote, all Controller 8.x versions (currently Controller 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 and 10.1) do not support Traditional and Simplified Chinese locales when using Oracle databases

Therefore, if using Oracle, you can use Traditional Chinese for 'application language' only.
  • You will not be able to store any Traditional Chinese characters in the database
  • For example it will not be possible to use Traditional Chinese characters in account names, company names etc.

As a consequence of the above:
  • If the client PC (running the Controller client) is running a Chinese version of the Windows OS, then it must have its Windows regional settings (Start/Control Panel/'Regional and language options') configured correctly
    • Configure the Regional Settings to be English (or any of our supported non-double byte languages)
    • Specifically, the regional settings must *not* be "Traditional Chinese".

(3) Regional Settings

There are two different parts (of the architecture) which need to be using supported Regional Settings:
  • Controller application server (COM+/system-account Windows user profile)
    • The Controller server supports using the same regional settings as the 'Application Language'
    • In other words, currently it supports 12 regions (see above for list).
  • Client device (end user's Windows user profile)
    • The Controller client supports using the same regional settings as the 'Code language'
    • In other words, currently it supports 43 regions (see above for list).

These are configured inside the Windows Control Panel, for example:

[{"Product":{"code":"SS9S6B","label":"IBM Cognos Controller"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Component":"Controller","Platform":[{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"10.1.1","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB10","label":"Data and AI"}}]

Historical Number

1030200

Document Information

Modified date:
15 June 2018

UID

swg21370695