Intenational character sets

From: Ed Stevens <nospam_at_noway.nohow>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 13:07:49 -0600
Message-ID: <qm2lv0t39euk9p1soj7032o3i2fl7g6d3j@4ax.com>

Oracle EE 9.2 on Solaris

This is something I've never had to deal with, and now, knowing the players, it will quickly build to 'why haven't you solved this already?'

We have an apps group accessing an Oracle 9.2 database thru Websphere, I've been .cc'd on some of the emails, which are all in "Websphere-speak" but they are quickly pointing to the dba to find a fix. It appears that when they try to insert a row containing French chars, the insert fails. Websphere only reports that there is an error, not the specific Oracle error.

In case anyone here speaks Websphere, or EJB, here is what appears to be the core of their problem:

OMS does not have the database issue when the CHAR fields in the database use a BYTE semantic. This is what was set when we developed OMS. However, the CHAR fields were changed to use a CHAR semantic since french characters use more then one byte. When this was changed to the CHAR semantic, that is when the issue arised.

I tested changing the database fields to a BYTE semantic again and OMS does not have the issue. From there I changed it back to use the CHAR semantic and recreated the mapping between the EJBs and database again. Again the issue occurred. There is a flag in Websphere that you can set for each field in an EJB to use the semantic CHAR or BYTE. I have made sure this flag is set to CHAR when I performed this test.

I see this as a issue between the mapping of a String field in the EJB to a CHAR field in the database using the CHAR semantic.

I am still trying to get hold of the guy closest to the problem. At this point, I've not even been able to find out what table/what database they are talking about. In the mean time, I am faced with a mountain of docs on NLS parms, varying data types, (possible re-creation of the db?).

I know I haven't given much to go on, but so far I'm pretty much in the dark myself. All I'm really looking for from the group is for someone help me narrow my reading assignment. If what I've quoted above actually means something to some here so they can help educate me, that would be gravy.
Thanks.

Ed Stevens

Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing. Received on Fri Jan 28 2005 - 13:07:49 CST