Data localization

As an end user, I would like captions of members of a particular level to appear in my own language. As a schema designer, I don't want to have to create a schema for each locale. As a DBA, I don't want each schema to have its own cache.

Currently the best practice is as described in http://forums.pentaho.com/archive/index.php/t-47453.html (see the post at 8-17 4:21am). The basic idea is to define a column for each locale. Suppose you want to support locales 'en', 'fr_CA', 'es'.

1. In the Product table create and populate the columns

product_caption_en
product_caption_fr_CA
product_caption_es

2. Define the level like this:

<Level name="Product Name" table="product" column="product_name"
caption="product_name_%

{locale}"
uniqueMembers="true"/>

3. Create the connection using the LocalizingDynamicSchemaProcessor. It will substitute %{locale}

.

I would like to improve this in say mondrian-4.1. In mondrian-4 schema syntax, we'd add a localePattern to the Caption element:

<Attribute name='Product Name' table='product' hasHierarchy='false'
keyColumn='product_id' nameColumn='product_name'>
<Caption localePattern='product_name_%

{locale}'/>
</Attribute>

"localePattern" is the same as "name", but it is scanned for %{locale}

and there is an escape syntax (TBD) for % if for some bizarre reason you want % in your column name. It is an error if the table does not contain a column for each locale supported by the schema.

Compare to the usual:

<Attribute name='Product Name' table='product' hasHierarchy='false'
keyColumn='product_id' nameColumn='product_name'/>

where captionColumn defaults to nameColumn, i.e. product_name.

No DynamicSchemaProcessor is required.

To declare which locales a schema supports, add a "locales" attribute to the Schema element:

<Schema name='Sales' metamodelVersion='4.1' locales='en,fr,fr_CA,es'>

When loading members, Mondrian loads the captions for all languages. Thus a single schema can serve all languages. You can get the new language by calling OlapConnection.setLocale(Locale). Then Member.getCaption() would magically return the right value for the connection's locale.