OpenEdge Application Server:<br />Administration Configuring agents

To configure agents to run in an international environment, you must address code-page issues and session options when you specify agent parameters. OpenEdge automatically installs the language you select as the default and configures your machine for this default language; however, you must configure each agent to use the appropriate parameters for the country it accepts requests from. Using a parameter (.pf) file helps you manage agent startup and connection information.

In Windows, use the Progress Explorer to configure the agents. You add the Parameter File (-pf) startup parameter and name of your parameter file to the Startup Parameters field for the agent Executable File.

On UNIX, use the Progress Explorer from a remote Windows machine or manually update the ubroker.properties file to configure the agents. You add the Parameter File (-pf) startup parameter and name of your parameter file to the srvrStartupParam option in the section of the ubroker.properties file where you define the Transaction Server.

For each supported international language, OpenEdge provides an example parameter file that you can use as the base for creating your own.

The following examples show the contents of parameter files for the Spanish, Japanese, and U.S. agents, respectively. They are based on the parameter files provided by OpenEdge in the prolang/lang directory, as shown:


-db intldb -cpinternal SHIFT-JIS -cpstream SHIFT-JIS -d ymd


-db intldb -cpinternal iso8859-1 -cpstream iso8859-1 -d dmy -E


-db intldb -cpinternal iso8859-1 -cpstream iso8859-1

These files provide the information that agents need to connect to a local database and to run with session options appropriate to their cultural context. For example, each agent displays dates in a distinct format; in addition, the Spanish agents use the comma as a radix for decimal data. You can add other parameters to the parameter file to further manage how agents connect to the databases.

Here is a sample setting for the srvrStartupParam option in the section of the ubroker.properties file where you define the wsJapan Transaction Server:


srvrStartupParam=-p web/objects/web-disp.p -cpstream iso8859-1 -weblogerror -p web/objects/web-disp.p -weblogerror -pf japan.pf

Alternatively, the WebSpeed application can let the language or nationality be selected by the user. From the user’s selection, the application can set the CPINTERNAL, CPSTREAM, and DATE-FORMAT attributes of the SESSION handle to the appropriate values.

Code pages

The agent’s CPINTERNAL code page (that is, the code page used by the agent for its internal processing) must be compatible with the code page of the database it connects to. This is easy to accomplish if the databases’s code page is UTF-8.

The agent’s CPSTEAM code page (which the -cpstream parameter specifies) must be the same as the agent’s CPSTREAM code page (assuming dynamic code-page support is not used).

Session options

Supporting an international Web site means more than just supporting several languages. You must also support the cultural difference in date formats and numeric notations. WebSpeed allows you to control how agents display and process date information and numeric conventions. The Date (-d) parameter lets you specify the format that an agent uses to process dates. By default, an agent processes dates as month, day, year. To display a date as day, month, year, specify -d dmy in the agent’s parameter (.pf) file. The European Numeric Format (-E) parameter specifies that a comma (,) represents the decimal point instead of a period (.).

In Windows, another aspect of an agent’s session environment that you control through startup parameters is which initialization (.ini) file an agent uses. If you want an agent to display error messages in a language other than the default language you chose for your WebSpeed installation, you must use an initialization file to set the PROMSGS option to the appropriate version of the PROMSGS file. The WebSpeed agent can use the [WinChar Startup] section of the initialization file, so you must set PROMSGS there. Specify the Initialization File (-ininame) parameter to specify the name of the initialization file you customized for the agent.