Globalyzer Overview and General

What programming languages does Globalyzer support?

• ActionScript
• C#
• C/C++
• Delphi
• HTML
• Java
• JavaScript
• Objective-C
• MXML
• Perl
• PHP
• Qt
• SQL (MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL)
• Swift2
• VB (Classic and .NET)
• VBScript
• XML

If your language is not shown above, please see Scanning Additional Languages

How thorough is Globalyzer in reviewing and modifying my code?

It is very thorough, but some of the detection and filtering specificity is controlled by the user. Globalyzer allows for strong detection and filtering controls using regular expressions, as well as built in search management capabilities. The more you learn Globalyzer's capabilities, the easier to refine your results.

With regard to modifying code, Globalyzer allows for the editing of code within its fully-functional IDE (Globalyzer Workbench), though you can use a different IDE to edit source code if you prefer. Globalyzer helps you navigate right from reports to instances in your code that need externalization or further analysis. You can also choose to mark issues with a comment for later review. Globalyzer does not modify code without the intervention of a developer. Globalyzer identifies issues, but makes no changes to code.

Why would I use Globalyzer versus my own scripts?

Globalyzer and the entire Lingoport Suite encapsulates a terrific amount of research and development regarding internationalization issues and how to resolve them. It would be extremely difficult to develop an internationalization detection script that is as comprehensive and powerful, much less easily leveraged across your software team. And, even if you could come up with your own scripts, wouldn’t your team be better off working on your product, rather than on internationalization issue detection?

Globalyzer was first released in 2001 and has been continually developed ever since, allowing for the inclusion of features desired from our broad customer base. Globalyzer in conjunction with the Lingoport Suite is an end-to-end solution for localization and internationalization from the localization manager to developers and linguistic QA.

What results should I expect from running Globalyzer on my source code?

Globalyzer looks for four categories of internationalization issues:

• Embedded Strings: Strings that must be extracted from the source code into translatable resource files so that their display can be in any language. Globalyzer also identifies concatenated strings.

• Locale-Sensitive Methods: Methods and functions (depending upon your programming language) that may restrict character encoding (ISO-Latin or Unicode support), as well as cultural formatting, including date, time, number and currency formatting

• Static File References: References to static files, such as images, which will need to be reviewed for cultural appropriateness and translation of string components within the file

• General Patterns: User-defined patterns that detect internationalization issues that are specific to your source code

How long does it take to scan code with Globalyzer?

This depends on what you are searching for and how many lines of code you are searching through, as well as if you are optionally using an additional database for tracking results. Most Globalyzer scans can review over two million lines of code in about the amount of time it takes to get a cup of coffee.

For example, an initial scan of 2.3 million lines of C++ code, on a 2.5 GHz dual core laptop, takes 3 minutes, 37 seconds; the results are similar for Java and C# source code scanning.

With each release we find ways to improve performance so be sure to download and install the latest version.

Do I have to submit my source code to the Globalyzer web site?

No. Your source code is never copied from your local machine. Globalyzer only accesses its server for Rule Set configurations, which are used to detect and filter internationalization issues, and for storing summary counts from the source code scanning process. The Globalyzer Workbench Client and Globalyzer Lite perform all code scanning and reporting on your local machine.

Once the Rule Sets have been solidified on the server, these can also be put in the local repository. Everything can be done locally without access to the Globalyzer Server.