Re: French characters

Your database character set might already be suitable (look in the NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS table). Any eight bit, western European character set should provide the ability to store accented characters in chars and varchars. The character set can be specified via database assistant at database creation time. Database assistant also allows you to specify a second character set that refers to the special data types like NCHAR and NVARCHAR and you can set this to whatever is required but it's probably not relavent unless you want to use the NCHAR types.

As well as the server character sets, you need to define a client character set on your client PCs. You do this with the NLS_LANG environment variable on the client PCs. For example, my database is set up like this:-

    On the server (NT) Database char set AL32UTF8

    On the client (Win2k) NLS_LANG=ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.AL32UTF8

AL32UTF8 is a special character set that can store oriental character sets as well as European characters. The exact character set you need to use will depend on the type of hardware you are using. The list of available character sets should be in your hardware specific Oracle documentation.

Good luck,

Richard

"John Leslie" <johnleslie_at_madasafish.com> wrote in message news:4412dd31.0302050636.32361b42_at_posting.google.com...
> When I create the database, is this when I specify the character set.
> Or is it done when Oracle is installed. I do not want to reinstall
> Oracle. I would like to create a new database with the French
> character set and leave my other SIDs alone.
> I use dbassit to create databases. I presume this will alow you to
> specify the character set.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Richard" <qaz1521_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<b1m7qg$76c$1$8302bc10_at_news.demon.co.uk>...
> > John,
> >
> > Have you set the NLS_LANG environment variable on your client? This
> > defines, among other things, the character set you are using locally.
If
> > Oracle thinks you are using a character set that does not support
accents, I
> > believe it will translate accented characters into their unaccented
> > equivalents.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Richard
> >
> > "John Leslie" <johnleslie_at_madasafish.com> wrote in message
> > news:4412dd31.0302030744.4528a5e0_at_posting.google.com...
> > > I need to include some French words in the data on my database. What
> > > do I need to do to get these to display properly when I do a select in
> > > SQL Worksheet? Basically the frech accent characters are not being
> > > displayed.
> > >
> > > John
Received on Wed Feb 05 2003 - 10:08:08 CST