RE: Another Character Set Problem

From: <Cherie_Machler_at_gelco.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 06:13:19 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.004CF711.20020913061319@fatcity.com>

The utility is called csscan for character set scan. It runs at the unix prompt with additional parameters (some optional and some not) much as export or import would. Before you use it the first time, you need to run csminst.sql from $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin to set up the work tables, etc.

Cherie Machler
Oracle DBA
Gelco Information Network

                                                                                                              
                    Ron/Sarah                                                                                 
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                    root_at_fatcity.c                                                                            
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                    09/12/02 09:23                                                                            
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Scott,

I have to agree with Oracle's statement that you need to have a UTF8 database to handle Chinese and Japanese characters. These characters require multi-byte encoding to be stored and therefore a UTF8 database is the way to go.
I am not sure "where" the Chinese and Japanese characters are stored, but it is quite likely that you will fail to store them correctly in a P1 database.
You can run a utility... Name escapes me that will check your contents to see if changing character sets will result in a loss of current data (this is an oracle supplied utility).
Alternately, you could export the contents of the database and import them into a new WE...P1 database. Make sure that you review metalink docs on setting your NLS_LANG correctly for such imports and exports.

HTH,
-Ron-

-----Original Message-----

Canaan
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 8:18 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

We are currently having a character set problem. We have a third-party product that is used for on-line courses (Prometheus from Blackboard, Inc.). The character set that the instance was created with was US7ASCII. The vendor says it should be WE8ISO8859P1, but we need to support Chinese and Japanese characters. I contacted Oracle support, and was told that the specified character set would not support those characters, but that I should use UTF8. I altered the instance to use UTF8 and ran into a CLOB problem. We installed patchset 4 (so we are now 8.1.7.4.0 on Sun Solaris 2.8) and that problem went away. However, none of the CLOB data is rendered properly in the application and I don't have a tool that allows me to see it directly out of the database.

I am tempted to try to change the character set to WE8ISO8859P1, as the vendor requested, with the hope that any deficiencies in that character set have been handled by their product. At this point, can I change the instance from UTF8 to WE8ISO8859P1? I do have a tar open on this issue and will be asking the same question there, but I'm hoping I'll get a response here faster (ok, I'm expecting that I will).

Thank you.

--

Scott Canaan (srcdco_at_rit.edu)
(585) 475-7886
"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer.

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Author: Scott Canaan
INET: srcdco_at_ritvax.rit.edu

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