Contents

Title and Copyright Information

Send Us Your Comments

Preface

Feature Coverage and Availability

Audience

Knowledge Assumed of the Reader

Installation and Migration Information

Application Design Information

How Oracle8i National Language Support Guide Is Organized

Conventions Used in This Manual

1 Understanding Oracle NLS

Oracle Server NLS Architecture

Locale-Independent Operation

Client/Server Architecture

Standard Features

Language Support

Territory Support

Date and Time Formats

Monetary and Numeric Formats

Calendars

Linguistic Sorting

Character Set Support

Customization Features

Character Set Customization

Calendar Customization

SQL Support

2 Setting Up an NLS Environment

Setting NLS Parameters

Choosing a Locale with NLS_LANG

Specifying NLS_LANG

NLS_LANG Examples

Overriding Language and Territory Specifications

NLS Database Parameters

Checking NLS Parameters

NLS Views

OCI Functions

Language and Territory Parameters

Time Parameters

Date Parameters

Date Formats

NLS_DATE_FORMAT

NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE

Calendar Parameter

Calendar Formats

NLS_CALENDAR

Numeric Parameters

Numeric Formats

NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS

Monetary Parameters

Currency Formats

NLS_CURRENCY

NLS_ISO_CURRENCY

NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY

NLS_MONETARY_CHARACTERS

NLS_CREDIT

NLS_DEBIT

Collation Parameters

Sorting Order

Sorting Character Data

NLS_SORT

NLS_COMP

NLS_LIST_SEPARATOR

Character Set Parameters

NLS_NCHAR

3 Choosing a Character Set

What is an Encoded Character Set?

Which Characters to Encode?

Writing Systems

How Many Languages does a Character Set Support?

ASCII Encoding

How are These Characters Encoded?

Single-Byte Encoding Schemes

Multibyte Encoding Schemes

Oracle's Naming Convention for Character Sets

Tips on Choosing an Oracle Database Character Set

Interoperability with System Resources and Applications

Character Set Conversion

Database Schema

Performance Implications

Restrictions

Tips on Choosing an Oracle NCHAR Character Set

Database Schema

Performance Implications

Recommendations

Considerations for Different Encoding Schemes

Be Careful when Mixing Fixed-Width and Varying-Width Character Sets

Storing Data in Multi-Byte Character Sets

Naming Database Objects

Summary of Data Types and Supported Encoding Schemes

Changing the Character Set After Database Creation

Customizing Character Sets

Character Sets with User-Defined Characters

Oracle's Character Set Conversion Architecture

Unicode 2.1 Private Use Area

UDC Cross References

Monolingual Database Example

Character Set Conversion

Multilingual Database Example

Restricted Multilingual Support

Unrestricted Multilingual Support

4 SQL Programming

Locale-Dependent SQL Functions

Default Specifications

Specifying Parameters

Unacceptable Parameters

CONVERT Function

Character Set SQL Functions

NLSSORT Function

Pattern Matching Characters for Fixed-Width Multi-Byte Character Sets

Time/Date/Calendar Formats

Date Formats

Numeric Formats

Miscellaneous Topics

5 OCI Programming

Using the OCI NLS Functions

NLS Language Information Retrieval

OCINlsGetInfo

OCI_Nls_MaxBufSz

NLS Language Information Retrieval Sample Code

String Manipulation

OCIMultiByteToWideChar

OCIMultiByteInSizeToWideChar

OCIWideCharToMultiByte

OCIWideCharInSizeToMultiByte

OCIWideCharToLower

OCIWideCharToUpper

OCIWideCharStrcmp

OCIWideCharStrncmp

OCIWideCharStrcat

OCIWideCharStrchr

OCIWideCharStrcpy

OCIWideCharStrlen

OCIWideCharStrncat

OCIWideCharStrncpy

OCIWideCharStrrchr

OCIWideCharStrCaseConversion

OCIWideCharDisplayLength

OCIWideCharMultiByteLength

OCIMultiByteStrcmp

OCIMultiByteStrncmp

OCIMultiByteStrcat

OCIMultiByteStrcpy

OCIMultiByteStrlen

OCIMultiByteStrncat

OCIMultiByteStrncpy

OCIMultiByteStrnDisplayLength

OCIMultiByteStrCaseConversion

String Manipulation Sample Code

Character Classification

OCIWideCharIsAlnum

OCIWideCharIsAlpha

OCIWideCharIsCntrl

OCIWideCharIsDigit

OCIWideCharIsGraph

OCIWideCharIsLower

OCIWideCharIsPrint

OCIWideCharIsPunct

OCIWideCharIsSpace

OCIWideCharIsUpper

OCIWideCharIsXdigit

OCIWideCharIsSingleByte

Character Classification Sample Code

Character Set Conversion

OCICharSetToUnicode

OCIUnicodeToCharSet

OCICharSetConversionIsReplacementUsed

Character Set Conversion Sample Code

Messaging Mechanism

OCIMessageOpen

OCIMessageGet

OCIMessageClose

LMSGEN

Text Message File Format

Message Example

6 Java

Overview of Oracle8i Java Support

JDBC

JDBC Class Library

JDBC OCI Driver

JDBC Thin Driver

JDBC Server Driver

The oracle.sql.CHAR Class

NLS Restrictions

SQLJ

Java Virtual Machine

Java Stored Procedures

CORBA and EJB

CORBA ORB

Enterprise Java Beans

Configurations for Multilingual Applications

Multilingual Database

Internationalized Java Server Objects

Clients of Different Languages

Multilingual Demo Applications in SQLJ

The Database Schema

Java Stored Procedures

The SQLJ Client

Summary

A Locale Data

Languages

Translated Messages

Territories

Character Sets

Asian Language Character Sets

European Language Character Sets

Middle Eastern Language Character Sets

Universal Character Sets

Linguistic Definitions

Calendar Systems

Character Sets that Support the Euro Symbol

Default Values for NLS Parameters

B Customizing Locale Data

Customized Character Sets

Character Set Definition Files

Customized Calendars

NLS Calendar Utility

Utilities

NLS Data Installation Utility

Overview

Syntax

Return Codes

Usage

NLS Configuration Utility

Syntax

Menus

C Obsolete Locale Data

Obsolete NLS Data

D Glossary