WebSEAL implements multi-locale support by internally maintaining and handling all data by using UCS Transformation Format 8 byte (UTF-8) encoding. UTF-8 is a multi-byte code page with variable width.
WebSEAL adopts UTF-8 as the default code page for all internal data handling. This support enables WebSEAL to process data from multiple languages at the same time.
WebSEAL administrators can configure how WebSEAL handles data input and output. An example of data input is characters that are sent to WebSEAL by a browser, such as user logins and forms data. An example of data output is logging information that is written out to the file system by the Security Access Manager event-logging manager.
WebSEAL handles data internally in UTF-8 regardless of the locale in which the WebSEAL process is running. When locale-specific data is needed as input or output, the locale in which the WebSEAL process is running becomes important. Most operating systems do not use UTF-8 by default. Administrators expecting locale-specific behavior need to know which locale is being used, and need to set WebSEAL UTF-8 configuration options to match the required behavior.
The system locale consists of two parts: the language and the local code page. Local code pages can be UTF-8 or not UTF-8. Historically, most operating systems use a local code page that is not UTF-8. For example, a common local code page that is used to represent the 8-bit ASCII character set for United States English is en_US.ISO88591, which uses the ISO-8859-1 character set.
Administrators running systems that need to process client requests and forms data in the local code page can modify the default settings for URL support (utf8-url-support-enabled) and forms support (utf8-forms-support-enabled). The default WebSEAL setting is to process data in UTF-8 format only.
For example, you might need to change default settings for systems that process client requests and forms data that uses non-UTF-8 local code pages. For example: