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UTF8 or conversion to Best Practice? [message #645763]

Mon, 14 December 2015 13:49

PBG789
Messages: 7
Registered: December 2015

Junior Member

DB was initially created with UTF8 character set back in 2011 . How does this differ from the best practices of using AL32UTF8 with National Character set AL16UTF16?

Is it ok/safe to stay on the current character set? Or should we make a conversion to standard character set AL32UTF8 with National Character set AL16UTF16, to comply with the Best Practices?

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Re: UTF8 or conversion to Best Practice? [message #645764 is a reply to message #645763]

Mon, 14 December 2015 13:51

BlackSwan
Messages: 26766
Registered: January 2009
Location: SoCal

Senior Member

>Is it ok/safe to stay on the current character set?
Yes, It is OK to stay with what you have.

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Re: UTF8 or conversion to Best Practice? [message #645766 is a reply to message #645763]

Mon, 14 December 2015 15:05

Michel Cadot
Messages: 68757
Registered: March 2007
Location: Saint-Maur, France, https...

Senior Member
Account Moderator

UTF8 is obsolete and fit Unicode 2.0 (Oracle version 8 and 8iR2) to 3.0 (Oracle version 8iR3 to 12c).
AL32UTF8 fit Unicode 3.0 (Oracle version 9.0) to 6.1 (Oracle version 12c).
Note UTF8 originally codes characters from 1 to 3 bytes and to 6 bytes to fit some Unicode 3.1 characters that were not defined in 3.0 but Oracle added in its UTF8.
AL32UTF8 codes characters from 1 to 4 bytes and is the only UTF8 character set that will support future version of Unicode.

So is it safe? It depends if you'll need Unicode 3.1 and up characters. If you already used characters coded with 6 bytes then you should migrate to AL32UTF8 as you already are in a non-standard character set (that is an Oracle specific one).

[Updated on: Mon, 14 December 2015 15:09]

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Re: UTF8 or conversion to Best Practice? [message #645768 is a reply to message #645766]

Mon, 14 December 2015 20:28

PBG789
Messages: 7
Registered: December 2015

Junior Member

Thankyou very much.

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