Re: mod_plsql / dad / character set problem

From: Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:12:25 +0200
Message-ID: <e9lvvl$4nj$1@news3.zwoll1.ov.home.nl>

Laurenz Albe schreef:
> Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>>> This is a bug in Oracle, because 0x80 has no meaning in WE8ISO8859P1.
>>> Basically the database allows you to store an invalid character.
>> Beg to differ - if it's a bug, it's a bug in Windows.
>> Or rather: it's a bug called politicians. European legislation
>> was so dreadfully slow defining code points, Microsoft decided
>> on their own (hey - haven't we seen them do that more often?)
>> to use 0x080. I'd say Win2k introduction had to do with this, but
>> am just guessing here. Oracle waited and waited and got bad press
>> for being so slow in their implementation of the Euro symbol, but
>> at least Oracle uses the official code point.
>>
>> It is not by coincidence, the character set is called we8MSWIN...

>
> I am afraid that I will have to contradict you.
>
> Unfortunately I will also have to exculpate Microsoft, much as I resent it:
>
> I was talking about ISO 8859-1 and not Windows 1252.
> In Windows 1252 the character 0x80 is well defined, it is the Euro sign.
> So if your database is WE8MSWIN1252, and you store a 0x80 in it, everything
> is hunky dory.

Missed out on that one; you're correct on IS8859P1 However, the database stores whatever you put in it; you can perfectly well store 0x80 in a ISO8859P1 database. [snip]
>
> In ISO 8859-1 the character 0x80 is undefined, left empty, it is an illegal
> character.

So be it - it's stored as a meaningless 0x80, then. Display it in an environment that will display 0x80 as €, and you're done!

> The problem - that I was so bold to call a bug - is that when Oracle uses
> a single byte character set and does NOT do character conversion (because
> client and server character set are identical), it will NOT check if a
> character is legal or not, it will just accept any byte as a valid
> character.

So - revert to making db and client char set the same.
>
> You will not detect this problem unless you try to retrieve that character
> at a later time when client and server character set are different.
> THEN Oracle will detect the invalid character and will deliver garbage.
>
> This is not the first time that I have encountered this very problem, and
> I think that Oracle should fix this as it can cause major headaches later
> on.
>
> IF you have consistently been storing Windows 1252 characters in an
> ISO 8859-1 database, the solution would be to just change the database
> character set without changing the data (if possible).
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe

-- 
Regards,
Frank van Bortel

Top-posting is one way to shut me up...

Received on Wed Jul 19 2006 - 14:12:25 CDT