Multi-Language Implementation in Oracle BICS

To enhance user experience for a global customer in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) reporting it is a common requirement to display the metadata or data in multiple languages. Implementation is different between On premise BI and BICS to achieve multi-language. In next few steps will explain how to achieve this BICS

BICS is similar to OBIEE on-premise but is a thin client interface and lacks some of the more advanced features. BICS only provides the BI Components in multiple languages and hasn't released any support yet for multi-lingual behavior for metadata, presentation catalog components.

Below approach would actually help when implementation is pure data modeler approach and not a lift and shift.

Step#1: Out of the box UI display

These comprise of the basic BICS UI and is an out of the box functionality available in BICS. This can be implemented by simply changing the Language setting in My Account to the user's preferred language.

 This results in the OBIEE components and navigational tag names translated as shown below (Language has been changed to French in this example)

Step#2: Data in dimensional columns

Language selection in My Accounts Tab for a user would be captured in session variable 'WEBLANGUAGE'. It stores the language code of the selected language by the user and few are below examples.

Below are values of this variable for a few languages.

For English, WEBLANGUAGE='en'

For French, WEBLANGUAGE='fr'

For Spanish, WEBLANGUAGE='es'

This session variable can further be used to identify the user's selected language preference and accordingly modify the user's display dynamically.

We should get all dimensional column data in different languages we would like to display.

For example the below sample table where ColumnA_EN has values in English and the next two columns ColumnA_FR and ColumnA_ES are French and Spanish respectively:

Servicios de Tecnología

Once we have data in above format,

In the BICS model create dynamic columns which will pick the column from the table based on the user's language selection in their My Account Tab.

Use the below column formula to dynamically pick up the translated data column based on the value of the session variable.

INDEXCOL( CASE  VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.WEBLANGUAGE) WHEN 'en' THEN 0 WHEN 'fr' THEN 1 ELSE 2 END , ColumnA_EN, ColumnA_FR ColumnA_ES)

Step#3: Metadata

Metadata display in multi-language means displaying the table and column headings in the Presentation layer in multiple languages.

Create a table structure as below with names (columns, prompts, titles ..etc) in English and respective translations as below

MULTI_LANG_TABLE

Each metadata column name to be translated (in this example, City) will have 3 rows (for 3 languages) in the table with different Translated_Name and Lang_Code

Corresponding to each metadata component that requires translation (column names, prompt names, etc.) create a session variable as below based on the Table in the Database.

SV_L_BASELINE:

SELECT TRANSLATED_NAME FROM MULTI_LANG_TABLE WHERE UPPER(LANG_CODE)= UPPER('VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.WEBLANGUAGE)')

 and upper(BASE_C)=UPPER('City')

Number of Columns = Number of Session Variables

In the Column headings for columns in analyses or prompts use the below syntax to capture the value of the session variable for that column

Individual dashboards where session variables were used in columns, prompts, titles, etc. will display in the language of preference as per the user. The presentation layer itself in the Analysis Criteria would however still present itself in the language in which it was created (in our case English).

Above 3 steps will help achieve the multi-language implementation in BICS.