Informix Guide to GLS Functionality Introduction

This manual describes the Global Language Support (GLS) feature available in Informix products. The GLS feature allows Informix application-programming interfaces (APIs) and Informix database servers to handle different languages, cultural conventions, and code sets. This manual describes only the language-related topics that are unique to GLS.

This manual provides GLS information on Informix database servers for both Microsoft Windows NT and UNIX.

This manual is written for application developers and system administrators who want to use the GLS environment with Informix products.

This manual is primarily intended for those users who need to use Informix products with a nondefault locale. It assumes that you are familiar with Informix database servers and associated products. If that is not the case, refer to your Getting Started manual. If you need more information about your operating system, see your system-specific documentation.

This manual assumes that you are using one of the following database servers:

• Informix Enterprise Decision Server, Version 8.3
• Informix Dynamic Server 2000, Version 9.2

Informix products can support many languages, cultures, and code sets. All culture-specific information is brought together in a single environment, called a Global Language Support (GLS) locale.

This manual assumes that you use the U.S. 8859-1 English locale as the default locale. The default is en_us.8859-1 (ISO 8859-1) on UNIX platforms or en_us.1252 (Microsoft 1252) for Windows NT environments. This locale supports U.S. English format conventions for dates, times, and currency, and also supports the ISO 8859-1 or Microsoft 1252 code set, which includes the ASCII code set plus many 8-bit characters such as é, è, and ñ.

If you plan to use nondefault characters in your data or your SQL identifiers, or if you want to conform to the nondefault collation rules of character data, you need to specify the appropriate nondefault locale.

The DB-Access utility, which is provided with your Informix database server products, includes one or more of the following demonstration databases:

• The stores_demo database illustrates a relational schema with information about a fictitious wholesale sporting-goods distributor. Many examples in Informix manuals are based on the stores_demo database.
• The sales_demo database illustrates a dimensional schema for data warehousing applications. For conceptual information about dimensional data modeling, see the Informix Guide to Database Design and Implementation.
• The superstores_demo database illustrates an object-relational schema. The superstores_demo database contains examples of extended data types, type and table inheritance, and user-defined routines.

For information about how to create and populate the demonstration databases, see the DB-Access User's Manual. For descriptions of the databases and their contents, see the Informix Guide to SQL: Reference.

The scripts that you use to install the demonstration databases reside in the $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory on UNIX platforms and in the %INFORMIXDIR%\bin directory in Windows environments.