NLS Part III - i really need help ... !!!

From: Ingmar <ingmar_at_netikus-dot-net>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 19:19:32 +0200
Message-ID: <3b3b68e9$1@news.profinet.at>

OK, I hope there is somebody out there that is familiar with NLS. I already posted a message today.
I have Solaris 7 running Oracle 8.1.7

I created three databases with three different character sets:

1.) US7ASCII
2.) WE8ISO8859P9
3.) UTF8

The goal: Realize what settings influence the ability to create European chars and have a correct sort order

OK, so what's the problem. This is what I tested

Chars entered   at                          Characters seen (visible)

Database

öäü server (local) öäü US7ASCII (1.)
äöü remote win32 sqlplus client oau US7ASCII (1.)
öäü server (local) vd| WE8ISO8859P9 (2.)
äöü remote win32 sqlplus client äöü WE8ISO8859P9 (2.)
öäü server (local) vd| UTF8 (3.)
äöü remote win32 sqlplus client äöü UTF8 (3.) If I enter umlauts directly at the server with sqlplus with an insert, then the chars will look
correctly only in the first db. For whatever reason, theoretically I would think that a 7bit
database character set shouldn't even be able to save it as an "ä" - but it does.
If I connect to the same DB from a remote win32 machine, the chars get converted to the same
char without the dots. This is what I would expect the DB to do. The other databases, that should support the umlauts, only support them when I enter them from
the remote client.
Exception: If I enter "öäü" on db 1. or 2. and view them locally at the server, I see "oau". If
I enter them at the server, I see "vd|". That shows me that the server is converting when working
over the listener - right?

Sort order:
The sort order will only be correct (after setting NLS_LANGUAGE or NLS_SORT) if I use one of the
latter databases, not the first one.

The problem:
We have a server based daemon that writes on behalf of the clients, so the umlauts work only
in the US7ASCII db where, in turn, the sort order won't work. Another thing is, besides that
problem, that I don't even remotely understand why this works for the US7ASCII db. Is it because
my Solaris box is configured for US ASCII? I tried different 'locale' settings with 'export LANG=...'
with no effect.

Now as you can see I already set up a funky little test environment here and I am getting more
desperate EVERY DAY. So please help if your familiar with NLS or maybe just explain to me silly boy
why things are the way they are.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Ingmar.

--

Regards,

Ingmar.



==========================================================

Get Eventwatch NT 2.0 FOR FREE at http://www.netikus.net !


==========================================================

Received on Thu Jun 28 2001 - 12:19:32 CDT