Re: Convert DB characterset WE8ISO8859P1 from to AL32UTF8.

On Jul 25, 4:50 pm, Mark D Powell <Mark.Pow..._at_eds.com> wrote:
> On Jul 25, 6:23 pm, RA <ang..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > Please need help with database conversion.
>
> > I have a database which has character set of WE8ISO8859P1. I need to
> > convert the DB to UTF8.
>
> > Below are the steps I followed for conversion, Please let me know If
> > my steps are wrong.
>
> > 1) I created a new database with AL32UTF8 character set.
> > 2) Exported(exp utility) the data from original database(source) with
> > character set WE8ISO8859P1.
> > 3) Copied the dump to the new server.
> > 4) Imported the data into the new database(destination) with character
> > set AL32UTF8.
>
> > Question: Do I have to use the same character set when importing the
> > data as the source database Or use the new database character set.
>
> > Thank you
> > RA
>
> I believe the ways it works is that Oracle will recongize the
> character set in use in the export file from the export header
> information and will convert it to the character set of the database
> automatically.
>
> HTH -- Mark D Powell ---

That's the way it used to work, in more modern versions it can actually have multiple charactersets embedded within the export file.

At any rate, RA, you will note when you do the import it will say what it is doing with the character sets. There's only a problem if you export data that contains characters that shouldn't be in that character set, which typically is only a problem with US7ASCII (See the thread titled Special Characters Created on a UNIX system with HP Terminal on US7ASCII for pointers to metalink documents that explain it in excrutiating detail). So you shouldn't have to worry, properly define the character sets on your clients and servers and Oracle will handle all.

There is a csscan utility which can be used to check if there will be data problems converting charactersets. It varies by Oracle version whether the csscan utility is available, but I vaguely recall there was a metalink doc on how to use it with a previous version.

jg

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