NLS_LANG

From: Álvaro G. Vicario <alvaroNOSPAMTHANKS_at_demogracia.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:29:20 +0200
Message-ID: <g6785v$kh3$1@huron.algomas.org>


I'm setting up Oracle libraries in a Windows Server box so two PHP web sites can access a remote Oracle 10g database. I've downloaded the Instant Client *.zip package and everything works fine so far, except for some charset issues (Spanish letters do not show properly). Setting NLS_LANG environmental variable seems to be the clue but I don't know which value I should use. Given that data is in Spanish I have three likely candidates:

SPANISH_SPAIN.WE8MSWIN1252 (the Windows codepage)
SPANISH_SPAIN.WE8ISO8859P1 (ISO-Latin-1, used in first site)
SPANISH_SPAIN.WE8ISO8859P15 (ISO-Latin-9, used in second site)

 From the "Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide" I understand that NLS_LANG makes Oracle perform a charset conversion. Since both sites use different charsets and I can convert in my PHP app when necessary, I think it'd be a good idea that Oracle does not make any conversion. But I don't know how to find out the charset that database tables are using natively. How could I find out? Does all this make any sense?

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Received on Wed Jul 23 2008 - 07:29:20 CDT

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