File name handling
Handling file names in a heterogeneous environment (different operating systems with different local settings, all in one cell) is a significant challenge. Data Protector handles file names under various local settings (such as language, territory, and character sets) that were in effect on the system when the file names have been created. File names that have been backed up using some locale settings and then viewed or restored using different locale settings, require a specific setup to be displayed correctly.
Background
Different platform vendors have chosen to support different sets of languages using a variety of character set representations or character encoding standards, such as ISO 8859-1, Shift-JIS, EUC, Code Page 932, and Unicode. These encodings conflict with one another - two encodings can use the same value for two different characters, or use different values for the same character. After the creation of a file name, there is no indication which code set was used. File names passed between systems using different encodings may not display properly in the GUI.
Passing data between different platforms is not problematic if all platforms use the same character set or if they use an implementation of Unicode (UTF-16 on Windows and UTF-xx on other platforms), which accommodates all characters.
Unfortunately, the UTF-xx implementation of Unicode is not yet a standard on UNIX systems. The components of the application can be distributed on several systems and several platforms, like Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000, HP-UX, Solaris, and AIX. Data on all these platforms has to be backed up and restored. Data Protector cannot compensate for the lack of a common industry-wide representation of languages and character sets, but minimizes the impact to the user.
Example
Under certain configurations in heterogeneous environments, the file names can appear corrupted in the GUI. For example, when using Data Protector, it is possible to back up files on HP-UX where the Disk Agent is running and to view those files using the Data Protector GUI running on Windows. Unless identical code sets are used on both platforms, file names may not display properly. This is because the same character value can have a different meaning and appearance under a different coded character sets.