Re: Weird characters returned from Oracle database

Marty Will Follow wrote:

> I have some Visual Basic code that calls a stored procedure on an
> Oracle database (through an ODBC link). Now, when I execute it on my
> laptop, all behaviour is as expected. However, when executing it on
> the corporate desktop (where it should run in the end) I get a strange
> return code. There are some weird ASCII characters such as 0%3|| (I'm
> using standard characters at the moment as the 'registered trademark'
> sign etc. may not display properly).

A couple of issues.

Not all fonts are equal. Certain fonts can display special characters, other fonts can not.

You can have different character sets in Windows. Are the character sets the same on both platforms?

ODBC. ODBC drivers have a nasty habit of running SQLs behind your back. For example, changing NLS_DATE_FORMAT to whatever the local date format settings are in Windows. It can also muck around with character sets.

MDAC. Do you have the same MDAC version installed on both platforms? I have seen how older MDAC versions mess around with quotes and return characters, causing invalid SQL statements to be send to Oracle.

One word. Unicode.

Visual Basic!? Are you _crazy_!!! ;-)

Weird chars from Oracle? Nope. Oracle only returns what you have given it to store. The actual representation of that character (whether ANSI or UNICODE) depends on the client.

--
Billy