Database Message .dbm File Format

In Server, the .dbm file format supports different languages that use different and incompatible encoding methods. In this .dbm format, each supported language is stored in a separate database so as to deal with multiple languages using different encoding methods. A .dbm file has the following format (compatible with the Views .dbm file format):

// IlvMessageDatabase ...

// Language: <ll_TT>

// Encoding: <encoding>

“&message” “message translation...”

The first line is an information line containing the following text IlvMessageDatabase (this is for compatibility with Views).

The language is represented using the ll_TT naming convention of Server where ll is the two-letter abbreviation for the language name and TT is the two-letter abbreviation for the territory name.

The encoding method must be one of the methods supported by Server. See the section for a list of supported encoding methods.

The following example shows part of a message database file for French:

// IlvMessageDatabase 3.1 Fri Jan 22 13:37:28 1999

// Language: fr_FR

// Encoding: ISO-8859-1

"&AlignmentLabelPicture" "Alignement texte / image"

"&Appearance" "Apparence"

"&April" "avril"

If you are translating your .dbm files to your local language, make sure your files are in this .dbm format.

Important Note

The following is recommended for database message files that are localized into American English:

  • Do not create an en_US.US-ASCII subdirectory in the locale directory for your files.

  • Put your files directly in your data directory, for example, logfile.dbm located in <$ILSHOME>/data/.

  • Set the contents of the files as shown in the following example, even if the encoding that you are running for American English is not US-ASCII. You can do this because US-ASCII is the weakest encoding and can be read by any other encoding that Server supports.

// IlvMessageDatabase 3.1 Tue Jan 5 21:06:51 1999

// Language: en_US

// Encoding: US-ASCII

"&AlignmentLabelPicture" "Alignment text / picture"

"&Appearance" "Appearance"

"&April" "April"