Default characterset for database on Windows Servers

II am using Oracle 9.2.0.5 on Windows Server 2000. When someone created a database, they used the default character set WE8NSWIN1252, which also shows up during export:

Export done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
On HP UNIX boxes, default character set is AL32UTF8 (?), some UTF8 character set.

Are there any advantages to using WE8NSWIN1252 windows? Why Oracle decided to use
A different default database character set (not NCHAR character set is same on Windows and UNIX),

I have been reading that WE8BNSWIN1242 is some ISO character set which lets many 127-256 chacatersets represented as single bytes instead of 2-3 bytes in UTF8. I thought people should get away from ISO standard and use UTF8 for new databases, bu Oracle default standard takes one away from UTF8.

Thanks. Received on Thu Sep 07 2006 - 22:26:50 CDT