Re: Oracle 10G - character sets.

From: Laurenz Albe <invite_at_spam.to.invalid>
Date: 09 Jan 2007 07:58:24 GMT
Message-ID: <1168329502.566521@proxy.dienste.wien.at>

markpapadakis <markpapadakis_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> The typo occurred when I was typing the message - I meant to say
> 'EL8ISO8859P7'.
>

>> On the other hand, if you are trying to store greek characters in a
>> database, WE8MSWIN1252 is the wrong database character set for you
>> because there are no greek letters in this codepage (the exception being
>> "mu", used as "micro" sign, which is UNICODE 0x00B5).
>>

>
> nls_database_parameters.NLS_CHARACTERSET is 'WE8MSWIN1252'.
> If I set NLS_LANG properly (i.e export
> NLS_LANG=GREEK_GREECE.EL8ISO8859P7 ) and run sqlplus, retrieving the
> rows (i.e SELECT columnNames from TABLE ) works just fine - I get the
> data back in greek.

This is extremely fishy, as there are no greek characters in WE8MSWIN1252, see
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/sbcs/1252.mspx

If database character set and client character set are different, as you say they are, then it should be impossible for you to retrieve greek characters out of that database.

I would like you to check two things:

Is the result of the following query really WE8MSWIN1252:

SELECT value FROM nls_database_parameters WHERE parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET';

Second, I'd like to see what code points are stored in the database for greek characters:

Identify a database field that contains, say, an Omega. If the Omega is in the, say, seventh position, you can determine the code point by

SELECT ascii(substr(field_with_omega,7,7)) FROM ...

What is the number returned for an omega?

You see, I am still struggling to understand what exactly is going on on your system.

But maybe you can take a shortcut:
If the greek characters mysteriously are correct in sqlplus, why not use sqlplus to extract the data you want?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe Received on Tue Jan 09 2007 - 01:58:24 CST