Unicode Support in Oracle Provide for OLE DB 8.1.7.3.0

Hello everyone,

I've R'ed the FM, and I've S'ed the FW, and I'm still unable to come up with a solution to what seems like a fairly simple problem. If Usenet were a more visual medium, you'd see that I can't afford to lose much more hair over this. :)

I've got an Oracle 8i (8.1.7.0.0) server, with a database configured to use UTF8. One of the tables has a LONG field containing some Unicode data. Everything's been working just fine using the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle, but now I find myself needing to access another table in the schema with a CLOB field. The MS Provider doesn't support CLOBs, so I switched to the Oracle Provider for OLE DB (version 8.1.7.3.0).

Now I've got my CLOB support working, but the aforementioned LONG field has lost its Unicode characters -- anything non-ISO8859 gets converted to a question mark (?) character. Just for kicks, I tried using the Microsoft OLE Provider for ODBC, going through the Oracle ODBC driver (version 8.1.7.4.0), and the Unicode stuff showed up just fine. Unfortunately, that's not an acceptable solution for different reasons.

According to the Oracle Provider for OLE DB User's Guide, Release 8.1.7 features transparent Unicode support. I shouldn't even have to set my client NLS_LANG variable (though it's already set to the proper UTF8 string). As long as my database is UTF8, the OLE DB provider should work without a hitch. But it obviously doesn't. And there's no mention anywhere in the User's Guide (or on OTN, or the web) of any configurable options for the OLE DB Provider that pertain to Unicode.

The server is on Win2K; the clients are NT 4.0 and Win2K.

Any suggestions, anyone?

Thanks in advance,
Michael Received on Mon Jun 30 2003 - 17:42:40 CDT