Re: Character set: moving from WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8

On May 6, 9:52 am, jeremy <jeremy0..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Could anyone point me in the direction of any guides which could
> advise on the likely steps required to make applications code work on
> a database created as UTF8 character set versus WE8ISO8859P1  (against
> which the application was developed and runs in production now)? I am
> really looking for suggested settings of any NLS parameters that might
> enable compatibility and a checklist of the things that might need to
> be reviewed.
>
> Appreciate any pointers
>
> many thanks
> jeremy

There's a lot of little gotchas, which mostly revolve around funny things done by apps and misconfigurations. For example, If you've put things that aren't in the character set into the db, then use an NLS with tools like exp that translates the character set for you, that's when data gets messed up.

There is probably too much documentation on this due to the gazillion possibilities. You want to see the globalization support guide in the docs, and there are a number of docs on metalink explaining some of the possibilities, some of which are out of date or disagree with others. In general, you want to set the db to the character set that includes all your localizations (as you are doing going to UTF), and set each client to their proper local setting. Before you convert, there is are scanners you run to see if anything will require special treatment.

Platform and version are very important, as well as your specific app, programming environment (see
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14225/ch7progrunicode.htm#g1022957 ) and localizations. In my experience, it seems overwhelmingly complex at first, but when you boil it down to specifics the answer is usually pretty straightforward.

jg

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