Oracle Apps 11i: Internationalization Support and Multiple Reporting Currencies

The Oracle E-Business Suite is designed for ease of deployment in a single global instance that meets the complex requirements of a worldwide enterprise. Strong internationalization support is essential in meeting this requirement. Key internationalization features provided by Release 11i include support for a wide variety of languages and territories, flexible date and number formats to suit local custom, multiple reporting currencies, and other country-specific functionality to provide compliance with local statutory requirements.

The majority of Oracle Applications products have been restructured in Release 11i to provide multilingual support at the product data level, utilizing the Unicode character set. As Unicode supports all characters in common use in the entire world’s modern languages, this removes the limitation on the number of supported languages that can be run in a single database. The additional functionality that was previously provided by Oracle Consulting is incorporated in Release 11i as standard.

Languages and Character Sets on the Database Tier

By default, Rapid Install creates a production database with the US7ASCII character set, and a Vision demo database with the UTF8 character set. However, you can, if desired, choose any other supported character set during the installation. Rapid Install recommends a character set based on the languages you license. Before installing Oracle Applications, you should carefully consider the future language requirements of your installation. The character set you choose during installation determines which languages the instance can support.

Languages and Character Sets on the Application Tier

By default, Rapid Install creates the application tier file system for a production instance with the US7ASCII character set, and the file system for a Vision demo instance with the UTF8 character set. However, you can if desired choose any other supported character set during the installation. Rapid Install recommends the application tier character set based on the languages licensed.

Character Sets on the Desktop Tier

Language support, which includes support for data input methods, character sets, and fonts, must be available on the desktop client. The character set of the browser is set by Oracle Applications for each session. The desktop browser must support character set and language-specific capabilities. For instance, Hebrew and Arabic require bidirectional support for right-to-left display, and Arabic also requires a browser capable of special character shaping.

Multiple Reporting Currencies

The Multiple Reporting Currencies (MRC) feature allows you to report on and maintain accounting records at the transaction level in more than one functional currency. MRC is based on the Multi-Org Architecture, and is a significant aspect of a globalization strategy.

The primary functional currency is the currency you use to record transactions and maintain your accounting data within the Oracle E-Business Suite. In the primary set of books, the functional currency is always the primary functional currency. Usually, the primary functional currency is the currency in which you perform most of your business transactions, and the one you use for legal reporting.

A reporting set of books is a financial reporting entity associated with a primary set of books. While the reporting set of books has the same chart of accounts and accounting calendar as the primary set of books, its use of a different functional currency (reporting functional currency) allows you to report in a different functional currency than that of your primary set of books.

You must define a separate set of books for each of your reporting functional currencies. For each set of books you use with MRC, you need to specify which is the primary set of books and which are the reporting set(s) of books. You then assign the reporting sets of books to the primary set of books. You must also define a primary responsibility to correspond to your primary set of books, and a reporting responsibility to correspond to each reporting set of books.