Globalization lets you create applications for all of your customers in all the languages that you support. In some cases, globalization can let you accept data input using a different character set than the one you used to implement your application. For example, you can create a website in English that lets customers submit form data in Japanese. Or, you can allow a request URL to contain parameter values entered in Korean.

Your application also can process data containing numeric values, dates, currencies, and times. Each of these types of data can be formatted differently for different countries and regions.

You can also develop applications in languages other than English. For example, you can develop your application in Japanese so that the default character encoding is Shift-JIS, your ColdFusion pages contain Japanese characters, and your interface displays in Japanese.

Globalizing your application requires that you perform one or more of the following actions:

• Accept input in more than one language.
• Process dates, times, currencies, and numbers formatted for multiple locales.
• Process data from a form, database, HTTP connection, e-mail message, or other input formatted in multiple character sets.
• Create ColdFusion pages containing text in languages other than English.