Note: The Global level should not be confused with definitions labeled (Global), such as the Phone (Global) parse definition. Rather, it is the level at the top of the hierarchy that is globally available to all locales.SAS Quality Knowledge Base for Contact Information 27
Data from different places around the world varies greatly in semantic makeup. The differences are not only in vocabulary, but also in word order and formatting. For example, consider the following two addresses:
100 Main Street
Hauptstrasse 100
The first address is written in a format that is common in the United States. The second address has a format that is common in Germany. Notice that not only are the words in the addresses different, but the word orders are different as well. Specifically, the building number comes before the street name in the US address, but the building number comes after the street name in the German address. Naturally, different sets of logic and reference data are needed to process addresses in each of these two formats.
To enable applications to accurately process data from different parts of the world, the SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) supports multiple locales. In the context of the QKB, a locale is a combination of a language and a country or region.
Definitions in the QKB are organized according to the locales that the QKB supports. For example, the English, United States locale contains definitions that can be used to process English-language data that originates in the United States. The German, Germany locale contains definitions that can be used to process German-language data that originated in Germany.
When you use SAS data management products like DataFlux Data Management Platform or SAS Data Quality Server, you can control which locale's definitions are used when your software accesses the QKB. For instructions for setting QKB locale attributes, refer to the documentation for your software product.
Every locale supported by the QKB has its own set of unique definitions. In addition to these definitions, there are shared definitions available for the locale. A three-level inheritance model is used to accomplish definition sharing in the QKB. The three-level hierarchy consists of a locale level, a language level, and the top level, referred to as Global (GB).
Note: The Global level should not be confused with definitions labeled (Global), such as the Phone (Global) parse definition. Rather, it is the level at the top of the hierarchy that is globally available to all locales.
The locale level contains definitions and data types specific to the country and its linguistic conventions. The language level contains definitions and data types specific to the language. Some definitions are not specific to a language or a country and are developed at the top level so they can be shared by all locales. It is important to note that definition inheritance is transparent to applications that access the QKB.
The QKB is organized in this way so that definitions can be shared among locales. Definition sharing is useful because some types of data are rendered in the same way across multiple locales. An example of this is name data. Since names generally have the same format in each English language locale, a single Name match definition can be shared by the English language locales in the QKB. This saves space in the QKB and makes any updates to the definition automatically available to the English language locales that inherit it. Likewise, email addresses are not specific to any language or country so these definitions were developed at the GB level and can be inherited by any locale in the QKB.
It is possible to prevent inheritance when necessary. Inheritance is overridden if a lower level has a definition with the same name and type as the inherited definition. Occasionally, the inheritance will be blocked if the inherited definition is not appropriate for use by the locale.
SAS QKB CI 27 includes support for the following locales that are associated with the language English:
This means that definitions belonging to the GB level and the English language level are available to each of these locales unless the inheritance is overridden or blocked.
Other sections of this online Help describe the definitions that are delivered with the QKB. All definitions that are available to a locale are listed on the relevant Definitions by Locale page regardless of the level at which they exist.
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