UTF character set application problem

We're having a problem with character sets. Recently we switched our database to UTF and now we have problems with names containing accented characters, etc. generating errors when we are trying to insert them = into
the database.

The data originates from a database that uses Western European character set. We expected that UTF being a superset, there would be no problems = with
switching. However, after a lot of testing, we found that UTF is not compatible with WE characters. If the data originates as WE, you must either store it in a UTF database or do an explicit translation to UTF.

This is counter-intuitive to me, but it is my first experience with = using
different character sets.

The application is in Java using thin JDBC drivers and no = Oracle-specific
functions. We created a very simple test program to prove out this = finding.
We've tested this on 9iR1, 9iR2, and 8i and it works the same.

Anyone else encounter this? Is it just my misconceptions on this in the first place? Or have I overlooked something?

Thanks,
Marc Perkowitz.

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