You can only change characters when your source characterset is US7ASCII.
Any other characterset you're starting from can not be converted to another.
SO WE8DEC -> US7ASCII won't work
WE8DEC -> UTF8 won't work
US7ASCII -> WE8DEC = OK
US7ASCII -> UTF8 = OK
US7ASCII -> whatever = OK
"Joel Green" <joel_at_volcanomail.com> wrote in message
news:ae0dc928.0111200900.18ac59e_at_posting.google.com...
> Hello,
>
> Changing a character set on an 8.0.6 Oracle DB worked, but now it
> won't change to anything else!
>
> The character and national character sets were set to US7ASCII. They
> were then changed to WE8DEC.
>
> I did:
> SVRMGR> connect sys as sysdba;
> SVRMGR> shutdown immediate
> SVRMGR> startup mount
> SVRMGR> alter system enable restricted session;
> SVRMGR> alter system set job_queue_processes = 0;
> SVRMGR> alter database open;
> SVRMGR> alter database character set WE8DEC;
> SVRMGR> alter system disable restricted session;
> Also changed the national character set.
>
> This worked fine.
>
> However, when I do the same, but change back to US7ASCII, or UTF-8 (or
> anything else), it says:
>
> SVRMGR> alter database character set US7ASCII;
> alter database character set US7ASCII
> *
> ORA-24329: invalid character set identifier
>
> Both UTF-8 and US7ASCII show up with the query:
> SELECT parameter,value
> FROM v$nls_valid_values
> WHERE parameter = 'CHARACTERSET'
> ORDER BY value;
>
> Which is baffling me :-)
>
> Joel
Received on Tue Nov 20 2001 - 12:24:12 CST
