Guidelines for Selecting a Language for Oracle Database

When creating your database, you must specify the character set at the database level. You specify other language characteristics at the database client level.

This topic is part of Configuring an Oracle Database for Siebel CRM.

To specify the character set of your database

Execute the following command to specify the character set for your database:
```
CREATE DATABASE INSTANCE_NAME CHARACTER SET CHARACTER_SET_NAME
```
where:
- INSTANCE_NAME is the name of your Oracle Database instance; for example, SIEBCRM.
- CHARACTER_SET_NAME is the textual name of the character set that you want to run; for example, WE8MSWIN1252 or AL32UTF8.

National Character Set

Siebel CRM does not use the three data types that store Unicode data using the national character set (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, NCLOB). The default national character set, AL16UTF16, is acceptable.

Sort Order and Date Format

Follow the documented Oracle Database guidelines for client-level settings for the NLS_SORT and NLS_DATE_FORMAT parameters.