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Re: Inserting Unicode Data.

From: Howard J. Rogers <hjr_at_dizwell.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 22:29:21 +1000
Message-Id: <4183890d$0$32574$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>


Frank van Bortel wrote:
[snip]

>
> Iirc, somewhere in these manuals, there is a remark,
> that a scenario as above ('any language'), is best
> served with AL16UTF16 (not(!) the default AL32UTF8!!!),
> especially when the clients run Windows.
> There's even a rationale, which I cannot remember right now.

Because UTF16 is fixed-width double-byte, whereas UTF8 is variable width.

It generally comes down to whether you are going to be entering lots of western characters (which in UTF8 are usually 1-byte in length, so UTF16 would be expensive), or lots of Eastern characters (which in UTF8 are two, three or even four bytes long, so in UTF16, they are comparatively cheap).

But since if you use UTF16 you only waste a byte for each western character you enter, whereas if you use UTF8, you may end up wasting two or three bytes, the overall balance probably favours UTF16.

It might also have something to do with the fact that UTF16 is the only national character set you can have in 9i.

Regards
HJR Received on Sat Oct 30 2004 - 07:29:21 CDT

Original text of this message

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