I18N vs. vSphere
With today’s global market, a software vendor has to consider the internationalization (I18N) issue to better serve users in different areas and maximize the return on the product investment. This article introduces the I18N basics of vSphere. Much of the content is based on my book VMware VI and vSphere SDK by Prentice Hall.
There are two basic meanings. First, you have to design your software so that it is localizable. In other words, you have to use the right APIs that can handle double byte characters. Sometimes people call this globalization (G11N).
Second, you should provide localized versions of your software so that users can read and use their native languages. Sometimes people call this localization.
In most cases, you externalize all the text strings that are visible to end users from the code to the resource files and translate them into different languages. Then localizing the software is as easy as combining the code and localized resource files. This is the way VirtualCenter server is localized. Depending on the programming language and platform, the resource files can be organized differently and might have another format. For example, Java uses properties files, yet C++ on Windows uses resource dlls.
That said, I18N is a broad topic that does much more than what is briefly covered here. Further discussion is beyond the scope of this book, but you can find more detailed information online.
As discussed, the VI SDK is essentially a set of Web Services interfaces. The WS-I18N summarizes four internationalization patterns that can be applied with Web Services when deployed.
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