Our FAQ's are sorted into a general FAQ page, and pages devoted to FAQ's related to our monthly topics. To get started, select a topic area that interests you from the menu on the right.
This week's FAQs:
Q: What is the basic design philosophy of global application development?
A: The application should adopt a development model which creates a single executable from a single codesource. Using this model, one version of the application will be able to handle all languages simultaneously. Locale-specific program data must be separated from the executable, and contained in one or more resources. Although the content of the resource may vary, it generally includes text visible to the user.
Q: How is character encoding of the client is determined in WebSphere?
A: WebSphere determines client character encoding based upon tje accept-language HTTP
header value, such as "ja." The accept-language values are associated with specific character encoding
in encoding.properties--"ja," for example, is associated with Shift_JIS. This design makes it possible
for a single appliciation to support multiple character encodings.
Q. Our system is more complex than just a single servlet, and involves integration with other applications implemented in non-Unicode character encodings. What is the possible solution?
A: The Java environment implements Unicode, and applications built on Java are Unicode-ready. When you want to integrate an application with non-Unicode applications, you can use classes in java.io package such as InputStreamReader or OutputStreamWriter for character encoding conversion. Also, you may want to use ICU (IBM classes for Unicode), which provides robust character encoding conversion functions. | 
