Unicode client programs

In the 8.1.6 National Language Support Guide (page 87), they say:

Figure 3–7, "Unrestricted Multilingual Support Example", shows how a database can support many different languages. Here, Japanese, French, and German clients are all accessing the same database based on the Unicode character set. Please note that each client accesses only data it can process. If Japanese data were retrieved, modified, and stored back by the German client, all Japanese characters would be lost during the character set conversion.

My question:
I assume the data loss is due to the inability of the 'client' to handle the data.
Is there such a thing as a 'Unicode' client for Oracle, which won't lose any characters? Something like a unicode-enabled version of sqlplus?

• doug edmunds 22 Sept 2000