Brent,
Oracle supports wide character data using Unicode UTF8 encoding. The
database must be created with this feature, I don't think you can convert an
existing ASCII database. UTF8 is a multi-byte encoding scheme. We have a
UTF8 Oracle database on a US English NT server, which can be accessed by a
client machine running Japanese NT. The client displays the Japanese
characters from the database correctly, but if the same query is run from a
US English NT client, the Japanese characters all look like upside down
question marks, which happens to be the default for a character that is not
in the US English (ASCII) character set on that machine.
So, to answer your question: yes it is possible. However, the US Character
set does not have glyphs for all the possible UTF8 characters that can be
present in the database. So, you see a lot of the default character when
looking at Japanese data in the database. Oracle stores the characters in
UTF8, so the data is still valid. To see exactly what was input by the user
you must look at the data using a system and application which displays the
characters using the same character set used at input.
Hope this answers some of your questions,
Craig
Brent Douglas <Brent.Douglas_at_DAYTONOH.NCR.COM> wrote in message
news:37bbfa12_at_rpc1284.daytonoh.ncr.com...
> hi all,
> any experience using oracle 7.3.4 and up in a mixed kanji / us character
set
> environment? is this possible? any feedback?
>
> i may be supporting an environment w/ both us and japanese (and some day,
> chinese) users.... the front end product is written in us / japanese
> versions, but in the best of all possible worlds, i will need to reference
a
> single database instance for security and stored document info....
>
> feedback?
>
> brent douglas, ncr
>
>
Received on Fri Aug 20 1999 - 00:15:15 CDT
