Re: French Characters

Alain Schartz wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> omar wrote:
> > When we created the database through "cr_databaseName.sql" we used this
> > value for this
> > parameter:
> > character set "we8dec"
>
> All data columns of type CHAR, VARCHAR2 and LONG as well as the data
> dictionary are stored in the database "character set".
>
> The database character set should always be a superset (or equivalent)
> of the operating system's native character set. The character set used
> by client applications that access your database will usually determine
> which superset is the best choice as Oracle automatically converts a
> non-supported character into it's "counterpart" in the target character
> set.
>
> So this is what happened to your french characters: your client tried to
> insert them into the DB (and the WE8DEC character set obviously does not
> support these characters), and Oracle converted them into what you
> retrieved afterwards ('è' became 'h', 'Î' became 'N', and so on).
>
> As I do not know your working environment, I cannot tell you what
> character set to use, but take this as an example: on our NT4.0 (server
> & clients) / Oracle 7.3.3.2 database, we are currently using the
> WE8ISO8859P1 character set, and the representation of french characters
> works fine.
>
> As the character set is defined at the creation of the database, you
> cannot change it later on (so you will be forced to recreate your DB).
>
> Hope this helps,
> Al.

More on this, I had the same problem but converted it all to the character
set you describe (WE8ISO8859P1) which seems to work fine for French and the one Oracle recommended when I inquired. Anyway, I didn't have to recreate the database to do this, Oracle sent me a script that worked peachy and I didn't have to recreate the database. However, I did go from US7ASCII to the 8-bit one I mentioned, not sure about WE8DEC to WE8ISO8859P1), call Support and ask'em!

***this is only my opinion and doesn't reflect the opinion of my employer, yadda, yadda, yadda, who cares.... Received on Tue Dec 30 1997 - 00:00:00 CST