The connector has been internationalized so that it can support double-byte character sets, and deliver message text in the specified language. When the connector transfers data from a location that uses one character code set to a location that uses a different code set, it performs character conversion to preserve the meaning of the data.
The Java runtime environment within the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) represents data in the Unicode character code set. Unicode contains encodings for characters in most known character code sets (both single-byte and multibyte). Most components in the WebSphere business integration system are written in Java. Therefore, when data is transferred between most WebSphere business integration system components, there is no need for character conversion.
Because this connector is written in C++, the connector framework converts application data from native encoding to the Unicode code set. The connector's application-specific component passes the data in native encoding to the connector framework, which converts the data to Unicode before sending it to ICS.
When the connector framework receives a request business object from ICS, it determines the appropriate locale information from the connector's Locale and CharacterEncoding configuration properties. It uses that information to convert the data to native encoding before passing it to the connector's C++ application-specific component.
Figure 1 illustrates where the character conversion occurs.
Figure 1. How the connector handles character encoding
For more information on the locale properties, see Appendix A, Standard configuration properties for connectors