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

Hi Ingmar,

did you also specify the national character set when creating the database? Can you please post the result of "alter database backup controlfile to trace;"?

My guess on the US7ASCII working: many 7-bit systems map the umlaut codes (which are clearly 8-bit) to [\]{|}~ (for Γ„Γ–ΓœΓ€ΓΆΓΌΓŸ) but display them as 7-bit. What does a "select dump (COL) from TABX" give? Then you will see as what value Oracle stores the beast.

This would explain the "working" US7ASCII and the wrong sorting (because [\]{|}~ are true 7-bit characters that are sorted as such). You may try to sort umlaut upper A, umlaut upper O, umlaut upper U, [, \ and ]. What gives?

You should create your database with any 8-bit character set (like WE8ISO8859P1 or UTF8). Then each client should set its environment characterset to whatever codes *it* provides. Oracle will notice that the character sets are different and it will try to convert between them provided the codes match the declared character set.

Martin

Ingmar wrote:
>
> 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
> ============================================================================
> ==========
> âÀü server (local) âÀü
> US7ASCII (1.)
> Àâü remote win32 sqlplus client oau
> US7ASCII (1.)
> âÀü server (local) vd|
> WE8ISO8859P9 (2.)
> Àâü remote win32 sqlplus client Àâü
> WE8ISO8859P9 (2.)
> âÀü server (local) vd|
> UTF8 (3.)
> Àâü remote win32 sqlplus client Àâü
> 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 "Γ€" - 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 "âÀü" 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.
>
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Received on Fri Jun 29 2001 - 03:28:59 CDT