Preface

This manual provides information about Oracle's Globalization Support capabilities.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

This manual is written for database administrators, system administrators, and database application developers who need to ensure that their database or applications include globalization support.

To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, basic Oracle server concepts, and the operating system environment under which you are running Oracle.

In addition to administrators, experienced users of Oracle and advanced database application designers will find information in this manual useful. However, database application developers should also refer to the Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals and to the documentation for the tool or language product they are using to develop Oracle database applications.

Organization

This document contains:

Chapter 1, "Globalization Support"

This chapter contains an overview of globalization and Oracle's approach to globalization.

Chapter 2, "Choosing a Character Set"

This chapter describes how to choose a character set.

Chapter 3, "Setting Up a Globalization Support Environment"

This chapter contains sample scenarios for enabling globalization capabilities.

Chapter 4, "Linguistic Sorting"

This chapter describes linguistic sorting.

Chapter 5, "Supporting Multilingual Databases with Unicode"

This chapter describes Unicode considerations for databases.

Chapter 6, "Unicode Programming"

This chapter describes how to program in a Unicode environment.

Chapter 7, "SQL Programming"

This chapter describes globalization considerations for SQL programming.

Chapter 8, "OCI Programming"

This chapter describes globalization considerations for OCI programming.

Chapter 9, "Java Programming"

This chapter describes globalization considerations for Java.

Chapter 10, "Character Set Scanner Utility"

This chapter describes how to use the Character Set Scanner utility to analyze character data.

Chapter 11, "Oracle Locale Builder Utility"

This chapter explains how to use the Oracle Locale Builder utility to customize locales.

Chapter 12, "Customizing Locale Data"

This chapter shows how to customize NLS data objects.

Appendix A, "Locale Data"

This chapter describes the languages, territories, character sets, and other locale data supported by the Oracle server.

Appendix B, "Unicode Character Code Assignments"

This chapter lists Unicode code point values.

Glossary

The glossary contains definitions of globalization support terms.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of the this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	The C datatypes such as ub4, sword, or OCINumber are valid. When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles, emphasis, syntax clauses, or placeholders.	Oracle9i Database Concepts You can specify the parallel_clause. Run `U``old_release``.SQL` where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.
UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, user names, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` table in the data dictionary view. Specify the `ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS` parameter. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, user names and roles, program units, and parameter values.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	`DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])`
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}`
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}` `[COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]`
`...`	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	`CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;` `SELECT col1, col2, ... , col``n` `FROM employees;`
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as it is shown.	`acctbal NUMBER(11,2);` `acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;`
`Italics`	Italicized text indicates variables for which you must supply particular values.	`CONNECT SYSTEM/``system_password`
`UPPERCASE`	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;` `DROP TABLE hr.employees;`
`lowercase`	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `sqlplus hr/hr`

Documentation Accessibility

Oracle's goal is to make our products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to the disabled community with good usability. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.