How do I get unicode characters out of an oracle.xdb.XMLType in Java?

Question

The subject says it all. Something that should be simple and error free. Here's the code...
String xml = new String("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<x>\u2026</x>\n");
XMLType xmlType = new XMLType(conn, xml);
conn is an oci8 connection.
How do I get the original string back out of xmlType? I've tried xmlType.getClobVal() and xmlType.getString() but these change my \u2026 to 191 (question mark). I've tried xmlType.getBlobVal(CharacterSet.UNICODE_2_CHARSET).getBytes() (and substituted CharacterSet.UNICODE_2_CHARSET with a number of different CharacterSet values), but while the unicode characters are encoded correctly the blob returned has two bytes cut off the end for every unicode character contained in the original string.
I just need one method that actually works.
I'm using Oracle release 11.1.0.7.0. I'd mention NLS_LANG and file.encoding, but I'm setting the PrintStream I'm using for output explicitly to UTF-8 so these shouldn't, I think, have any bearing on the question.
Thanks for your time.
Stryder, aka Ralph

Answer 1

I created analogic test case, and executed it with DB 11.1.0.7 (Linux x86), which seems to work fine.
Please refer to the execution procedure below:
* I used AL32UTF8 database.
1. Create simple test case by executing the following SQL script from SQL*Plus:
connect / as sysdba
create user testxml identified by testxml;
grant connect, resource to testxml;
connect testxml/testxml
create table testtab (xml xmltype) ;
insert into testtab values (xmltype('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'||chr(10)||'<x>'||unistr('\2026')||'</x>'||chr(10)));
-- chr(10) is a linefeed code.
commit;
2. Create QueryXMLType.java as follows:
import java.sql.*;
import oracle.sql.*;
import oracle.jdbc.*;
import oracle.xdb.XMLType;
import java.util.*;
public class QueryXMLType
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception, SQLException
          DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());
          OracleConnection conn = (OracleConnection) DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:oracle:oci8:@localhost:1521:orcl", "testxml", "testxml");
          OraclePreparedStatement stmt = (OraclePreparedStatement)conn.prepareStatement("select xml from testtab");
          ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery();
          OracleResultSet orset = (OracleResultSet) rs;
          while (rs.next())
               XMLType xml = XMLType.createXML(orset.getOPAQUE(1));
               System.out.println(xml.getStringVal());
          rs.close();
          stmt.close();
3. Compile QueryXMLType.java and execute QueryXMLType.class as follows:
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
export CLASSPATH=.:$ORACLE_HOME/jdbc/lib/ojdbc5.jar:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib/orai18n.jar:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib/xdb.jar:$ORACLE_HOME/lib/xmlparserv2.jar
javac QueryXMLType.java
java QueryXMLType
-> Then you will see U+2026 character (horizontal ellipsis) is properly output.
My Java code came from "Oracle XML DB Developer's Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) Part Number B28369-04" with some modification of:
- Example 14-1 XMLType Java: Using JDBC to Query an XMLType Table
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/appdev.111/b28369/xdb11jav.htm#i1033914
and
- Example 18-23 Using XQuery with JDBC
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/appdev.111/b28369/xdb_xquery.htm#CBAEEJDE