Oracle8 Enterprise Edition Getting Started Release 8.0.4 for Windows NT A55928-01 |
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This appendix describes National Language Support (NLS).
Specific topics discussed are:
Oracle8 Enterprise Edition provides NLS that enables users to interact with the database in their selected language. When you install Oracle8 Enterprise Edition, you select a language for database messages. Oracle Installer supplies a value for the NLS_LANG parameter based on the language selected.
The NLS_LANG parameter uses the following format:
NLS_LANG = LANGUAGE_TERRITORY.CHARACTER_SET
where:
The default language at installation is either the operating system language or the NLS_LANG setting of the currently selected Oracle home.
The NLS_LANG parameter is stored in the registry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\NLS_LANG subkey for the first Oracle home on your computer. For subsequent installations to different Oracle homes on the same computer, the path is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ORACLE\HOMEID\NLS_LANG, where ID is the unique number identifying the Oracle home. See Appendix C, "Configuration Parameters and the Registry" for more information on the subkey locations for multiple Oracle homes.
See Chapter 1, "Initialization Parameters" and Chapter 4, "National Language Support" in Oracle8 Reference for information on the NLS_LANG parameter and NLS initialization parameters.
Additional Information:
The following table lists the default NLS_LANG values if you select any of these languages during installation of Oracle8 Enterprise Edition.
When using Oracle utilities such as Server Manager, SQL Loader, SQL*Plus, Import, and Export in MS-DOS mode, the character set field of the NLS_LANG parameter for the session must first be set to the correct value. This is required because MS-DOS mode uses, with a few exceptions, a different code page (OEM Code-page) from Windows (ANSI Code-page), and the default Oracle Home NLS_LANG parameter in the registry is always set to the appropriate Windows code-page. If the NLS_LANG parameter for the MS-DOS mode session is not set appropriately, error messages and data can be corrupted due to incorrect character set conversion. The following table lists the Oracle character sets that correspond to the OEM Primary Code-page in MS-DOS mode for each of the supported languages.
For Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, the OEM Code-page is identical to the ANSI Code-page. In this case, there is no need to set the NLS_LANG in MS-DOS mode.
Similarly, in Batch mode, set the correct character set value of the NLS_LANG by inserting a SET NLS_LANG command at the start of the batch procedure, according to the character set of the files to be processed in the procedure.
To install an additional language:
This method keeps any language support that was previously installed and adds the new language.