RE: Unicode data migration from SQL Server to Oracle

It is not a problem to push data from SQL Server to Oracle even using Microsoft's "Import and Export Data" utility (as long as Oracle's own ODBC drivers are used)  

But our developers want to have views on Oracle side that would point to SQL Server tables - and write migration scripts againt these views.  

Regards,
Michael Rosenblum
Dulcian Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill_at_gmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 12:12 PM To: mrosenblum_at_dulcian.com
Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Unicode data migration from SQL Server to Oracle

Have you tried using the Migration Workbench in SQL Developer? It doesn't require using ODBC.
The Oracle connection is via Java connector, and the SQL Server connection is via open source SQL Server connector (jTDS)

If you do try it, use version 1.2. The new 1.5 version of SQL Developer doesn't work for the SQL Server -> Oracle migration.

I just used it this week, and have a question in on OTN for the 1.5 version.

Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Michael Rosenblum <mrosenblum_at_dulcian.com> wrote:

Good morning, all!  

Currently we are building a system in Ethiopia - and as a part of the project need to do a data migration. So.  

1. Source - SQL Server 2000 Database with a number of tables with NVARCHAR datatype
2. Stored data is in Ge'ez language - it does mean that there is no standard locale.
3. SQL Server internally is using UCS-2 to store Unicode data (compatible with UTF16)
4. Target - Oracle 10g (10.2.0.4) Enterprise edition on Windows 2003 Server 32-bit
5. NLS_CHARACTERSET = AL32UTF8
6. NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET=AL16UTF16
7. Migration mechanism - Heterogeneous Services via ODBC

Problem - Unicode data comes to Oracle as '?'.  

And it is not a visual affectation:  

SQL> select ascii("Column1") a, "Column1" from test_at_db_link A Column1
--------- --------
63 ?
SQL>   Attempted actions:

1. OLEDB - the same problem
2. Third party ODBC drivers - don't even recognize NVARCHAR columns
3. Played with HS_LANGUAGE and HS_NLS_LANG - no impact.
 

Any ideas/suggestions?  

Thanks,
Michael Rosenblum
Dulcian Inc.    

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l