How Client Applications Use locales.dat

Client applications use the locales.dat file to identify the language and character set to use.

When a client application starts, it checks the operating system locale setting and the locales.dat file to see if the setting is appropriate for Adaptive Server. For example, a locale entry for French looks like:
```
locale = fr_FR, french, iso_1
```
When the client connects to Adaptive Server, the language and character set information is passed to Adaptive Server in the login record.
Adaptive Server then uses:
- The character set information, for example, iso_1, to identify the client’s character set and verify whether it can convert character data to this character set
- The language (in the preceding example, French) and character set information to see if it has messages in the client’s language

Note: Adaptive Server software includes some locale entries already defined in the locales.dat file. If these entries do not meet your needs, you can either modify them or add new locale entries.