Re: French Characters

Hi,

omar wrote:
> When we created the database through "cr databaseName.sql" we used this
 

> value for this
> parameter:
> character set "we8dec"

All data columns of type CHAR, VARCHAR2 and LONG as well as the data dictionary are stored in the database "character set".

The database character set should always be a superset (or equivalent) of the operating system's native character set. The character set used by client applications that access your database will usually determine which superset is the best choice as Oracle automatically converts a non-supported character into it's "counterpart" in the target character set.

So this is what happened to your french characters: your client tried to insert them into the DB (and the WE8DEC character set obviously does not support these characters), and Oracle converted them into what you retrieved afterwards (' ' became 'h', ' ' became 'N', and so on).

As I do not know your working environment, I cannot tell you what character set to use, but take this as an example: on our NT4.0 (server & clients) / Oracle 7.3.3.2 database, we are currently using the WE8ISO8859P1 character set, and the representation of french characters works fine.

As the character set is defined at the creation of the database, you cannot change it later on (so you will be forced to recreate your DB).

Hope this helps,
Al. Received on Tue Dec 30 1997 - 00:00:00 CST