Import error character set conversion

import done in US7ASCII character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
import server uses AL32UTF8 character set (possible charset conversion)
export client uses WE8ISO8859P1 character set (possible charset conversion)
Import terminated successfully without warnings.Your import was successful. However, there are a few things you need to note from the top of the import log. It is advisable to use correct NLS settings when doing export/import to avoid data corruption/loss. That idea is to ensure you set the correct NLS setting (NLS_LANG) at the client before running exp or imp. In some cases, the setting does not matter because the different character sets can go together.
In this case, I would not worry about it.

Similar Messages

Character set Conversion Buffer Overflow Error

Hi,
I have got an issue while loading data from a flat file to a staging table. i.e., Character set Conversion Buffer Overflow. Suppose there are 10,000 records in a flat file, after running control file only 100+ records are loading to the staging table. Remaining are errored out. I think there is no issue with control file because when I load data from different flat file containing same no. of records as the previous flat file, it is loading all the records. what could be the reason and solution for this issue.
Can anyone please suggest me how to resolve this issue.

DBNS_OUTPUT is a poor choice for debugging. It has very limited used. And as you've discovered, merely debugging code can now result in new exceptions in the code.
The proper approach would be to create your own debug procedure (or package). Have your code call this instead of DBMS_OUTPUT.
In your debug procedure, you can decide what you want to do with that debug data for that specific program in the current environment and circumstances.
The program that runs could be a DBMS_JOB in which case DBMS_OUTPUT is useless. The program can be called several layers deep from other PL/SQL code.. and you want to know just who is calling your code. Etc.
Having your own debug procedure allows you to:
- create an autonomous transaction and log the debug data to a log table
- write it to a DBMS_PIPE for interactive debugging
- write it to DBMS_OUTPUT
- record the PL/SQL call stack to determine who is calling who
- record the current session's environment (e.g. session_context)
- record the current session's statistics, opens cursors, current SQL, etc. (courtesy of the V$ views)
etc. etc.
In other words, your debug procedure gives you the flexibility to decide on HOW to handle the debugging.
And when you code goes into production, your debug procedure ships with, containing a simple NULL command.. Which means that at any time the DBA can (when the need arise), add his/her debug methods into it in order to trace a production problem.
Using DBMS_OUTPUT is a very poor, and often just wrong, choice.
It is fine for writing a quick test. But when you are developing production code and using DBMS_OUTPUT, you must ask yourself whether you have made the right choice.
And this is not just about wrapping DBMS_OUTPUT. But also wrapping other system calls like RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR and so on.

Character set conversion problem when importing application with script.

Our database has character set: WE8MSWIN1252
We have a region with the following title: Kopiëren. The ë is stored as character 235 in the database.
When I make an application export the file is in UTF-8. The ë is now stored as hex C3 AB in this file.
When importing the application using the Apex tool, the ë is again stored as character 235 in the database.
In our installation script we use some code to load the application. It look something like this:
declare
begin
   -- Determine workspace ID
   apex_application_install.set_workspace_id(l_workspace_id);
   -- Determine app ID
   apex_application_install.set_application_id(l_app_id);
   apex_application_install.generate_offset;
   apex_application_install.set_schema(l_schema);
   apex_application_install.set_application_alias(l_schema);
   l_app_id := apex_application_install.get_application_id;
end;
@..\apex\f200.sqlThis works fine except that no character set conversion takes place. The UTF-8 character is placed in the database so our region has as title: KopiÃ«ren
Is there a way to fix this?

Hi Rene,
The character set portion of your local NLS_LANG environment variable should be AL32UTF8, and this should be set prior to you importing your application via SQL*Plus.
Joel

Fixing a US7ASCII - WE8ISO8859P1 Character Set Conversion Disaster

In hopes that it might be helpful in the future, here's the procedure I followed to fix a disastrous unintentional US7ASCII on 9i to WE8ISO8859P1 on 10g migration.
BACKGROUND
Oracle has multiple character sets, ranging from US7ASCII to AL32UTF16.
US7ASCII, of course, is a cheerful 7 bit character set, holding the basic ASCII characters sufficient for the English language.
However, it also has a handy feature: character fields under US7ASCII will accept characters with values > 128. If you have a web application, users can type (or paste) Us with umlauts, As with macrons, and quite a few other funny-looking characters.
These will be inserted into the database, and then -- if appropriately supported -- can be selected and displayed by your app.
The problem is that while these characters can be present in a VARCHAR2 or CLOB column, they are not actually legal. If you try within Oracle to convert from US7ASCII to WE8ISO8859P1 or any other character set, Oracle recognizes that these characters with values greater than 127 are not valid, and will replace them with a default "unknown" character. In the case of a change from US7ASCII to WE8ISO8859P1, it will change them to 191, the upside down question mark.
Oracle has a native utility, introduced in 8i, called csscan, which assists in migrating to different character sets. This has been replaced in newer versions with the Database MIgration Assistant for Unicode (DMU), which is the new recommended tool for 11.2.0.3+.
These tools, however, do no good unless they are run. For my particular client, the operations team took a database running 9i and upgraded it to 10g, and as part of that process the character set was changed from US7ASCII to WE8ISO8859P1. The database had a large number of special characters inserted into it, and all of these abruptly turned into upside-down question marks. The users of the application didn't realize there was a problem until several weeks later, by which time they had put a lot of new data into the system. Rollback was not possible.
FIXING THE PROBLEM
How fixable this problem is and the acceptable methods which can be used depend on the application running on top of the database. Fortunately, the client app was amenable.
(As an aside note: this approach does not use csscan -- I had done something similar previously on a very old system and decided it would take less time in this situation to revamp my old procedures and not bring a new utility into the mix.)
We will need to separate approaches -- one to fix the VARCHAR2 & CHAR fields, and a second for CLOBs.
In order to set things up, we created two environments. The first was a clone of production as it is now, and the second a clone from before the upgrade & character set change. We will call these environments PRODCLONE and RESTORECLONE.
Next, we created a database link, OLD6. This allows PRODCLONE to directly access RESTORECLONE. Since they were cloned with the same SID, establishing the link needed the global_names parameter set to false.
alter system set global_names=false scope=memory;
CREATE PUBLIC DATABASE LINK OLD6
CONNECT TO DBUSERNAME
IDENTIFIED BY dbuserpass
USING 'restoreclone:1521/MYSID';
Testing the link...
SQL> select count(1) from users@old6;
COUNT(1)
       454
Here is a row in a table which contains illegal characters. We are accessing RESTORECLONE from PRODCLONE via our link.
PRODCLONE> select dump(title) from my_contents@old6 where pk1=117286;
DUMP(TITLE)
Typ=1 Len=49: 78,67,76,69,88,45,80,78,174,32,69,120,97,109,32,83,116,121,108,101
,32,73,110,116,101,114,97,99,116,105,118,101,32,82,101,118,105,101,119,32,81,117
,101,115,116,105,111,110,115
By comparison, a dump of that row on PRODCLONE's my_contents gives:
PRODCLONE> select dump(title) from my_contents where pk1=117286;
DUMP(TITLE)
Typ=1 Len=49: 78,67,76,69,88,45,80,78,191,32,69,120,97,109,32,83,116,121,108,101
,32,73,110,116,101,114,97,99,116,105,118,101,32,82,101,118,105,101,119,32,81,117
,101,115,116,105,111,110,115
Note that the "174" on RESTORECLONE was changed to "191" on PRODCLONE.
We can manually insert CHR(174) into our PRODCLONE and have it display successfully in the application.
However, I tried a number of methods to copy the data from RESTORECLONE to PRODCLONE through the link, but entirely without success. Oracle would recognize the character as invalid and silently transform it.
Eventually, I located a clever workaround at this link:
https://kr.forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=231927
It works like this:
On RESTORECLONE you create a view, vv, with UTL_RAW:
RESTORECLONE> create or replace view vv as select pk1,utl_raw.cast_to_raw(title) as title from my_contents;
View created.
This turns the title to raw on the RESTORECLONE.
You can now convert from RAW to VARCHAR2 on the PRODCLONE database:
PRODCLONE> select dump(utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 (title)) from vv@old6 where pk1=117286;
DUMP(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2(TITLE))
Typ=1 Len=49: 78,67,76,69,88,45,80,78,174,32,69,120,97,109,32,83,116,121,108,101
,32,73,110,116,101,114,97,99,116,105,118,101,32,82,101,118,105,101,119,32,81,117
,101,115,116,105,111,110,115
The above works because oracle on PRODCLONE never knew that our TITLE string on RESTORE was originally in US7ASCII, so it was unable to do its transparent character set conversion.
PRODCLONE> update my_contents set title=( select utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 (title) from vv@old6 where pk1=117286) where pk1=117286;
PRODCLONE> select dump(title) from my_contents where pk1=117286;
DUMP(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2(TITLE))
Typ=1 Len=49: 78,67,76,69,88,45,80,78,174,32,69,120,97,109,32,83,116,121,108,101
,32,73,110,116,101,114,97,99,116,105,118,101,32,82,101,118,105,101,119,32,81,117
,101,115,116,105,111,110,115
Excellent! The "174" character has survived the transfer and is now in place on PRODCLONE.
Now that we have a method to move the data over, we have to identify which columns /tables have character data that was damaged by the conversion. We decided we could ignore anything with a length smaller than 10 -- such fields in our application would be unlikely to have data with invalid characters.
RESTORECLONE> select count(1) from user_tab_columns where data_type in ('CHAR','VARCHAR2') and data_length > 10;
   COUNT(1)
    533
By converting a field to WE8ISO8859P1, and then comparing it with the original, we can see if the characters change:
RESTORECLONE> select count(1) from my_contents where title != convert (title,'WE8ISO8859P1','US7ASCII') ;
COUNT(1)
     10568
So 10568 rows have characters which were transformed into 191s as part of the original conversion.
[ As an aside, we can't use CONVERT() on LOBs -- for them we will need another approach, outlined further below.
RESTOREDB> select count(1) from my_contents where main_data != convert (convert(main_DATA,'WE8ISO8859P1','US7ASCII'),'US7ASCII','WE8ISO8859P1') ;
select count(1) from my_contents where main_data != convert (convert(main_DATA,'WE8ISO8859P1','US7ASCII'),'US7ASCII','WE8ISO8859P1')
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected - got CLOB
Anyway, now that we can identify VARCHAR2 fields which need to be checked, we can put together a PL/SQL stored procedure to do it for us:
create or replace procedure find_us7_strings
(table_name varchar2,
fix_col varchar2 )
authid current_user
as
orig_sql varchar2(1000);
begin
orig_sql:='insert into cnv_us7(mytablename,myindx,mycolumnname) select '''||table_name||''',pk1,'''||fix_col||''' from '||table_name||' where '||fix_col||' != CONVERT(CONVERT('||fix_col||',''WE8ISO8859P1''),''US7ASCII'') and '||fix_col||' is not null';
-- Uncomment if debugging:
-- dbms_output.put_line(orig_sql);
execute immediate orig_sql;
end;
And create a table to store the information as to which tables, columns, and rows have the bad characters:
drop table cnv_us7;
create table cnv_us7 (mytablename varchar2(50), myindx number,      mycolumnname varchar2(50) ) tablespace myuser_data;
create index list_tablename_idx on cnv_us7(mytablename) tablespace myuser_indx;
With a SQL-generating SQL script, we can iterate through all the tables/columns we want to check:
--example of using the data: select title from my_contents where pk1 in (select myindx from cnv_us7)
set head off pagesize 1000 linesize 120
spool runme.sql
select 'exec find_us7_strings ('''||table_name||''','''||column_name||'''); ' from user_tab_columns
      where
          data_type in ('CHAR','VARCHAR2')
          and table_name in (select table_name from user_tab_columns where column_name='PK1' and table_name not in ('HUGETABLEIWANTTOEXCLUDE','ANOTHERTABLE'))
          and char_length > 10
          order by table_name,column_name;
spool off;
set echo on time on timing on feedb on serveroutput on;
spool output_of_runme
@./runme.sql
spool off;
Which eventually gives us the following inserted into CNV_US7:
20:48:21 SQL> select count(1),mycolumnname,mytablename from cnv_us7 group by mytablename,mycolumnname;
         4 DESCRIPTION                                        MY_FORUMS
     21136 TITLE                                              MY_CONTENTS
Out of 533 VARCHAR2s and CHARs, we only had five or six columns that needed fixing
We create our views on RESTOREDB:
create or replace view my_forums_vv as select pk1,utl_raw.cast_to_raw(description) as description from forum_main;
create or replace view my_contents_vv as select pk1,utl_raw.cast_to_raw(title) as title from my_contents;
And then we can fix it directly via sql:
update my_contents taborig1 set TITLE= (select utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 (TITLE) from my_contents_vv@old6 where pk1=taborig1.pk1)
where pk1 in (
select tabnew.pk1 from my_contents@old6 taborig,my_contents tabnew,cnv_us7@old6
      where taborig.pk1=tabnew.pk1
          and myindx=tabnew.pk1
          and mycolumnname='TITLE'
          and mytablename='MY_CONTENTS'
          and convert(taborig.TITLE,'US7ASCII','WE8ISO8859P1') = tabnew.TITLE );
Note this part:
      "and convert(taborig.TITLE,'US7ASCII','WE8ISO8859P1') = tabnew.TITLE "
This checks to verify that the TITLE field on the PRODCLONE and RESTORECLONE are the same (barring character set issues). This is there because if the users have changed TITLE -- or any other field -- on their own between the time of the upgrade and now, we do not want to overwrite their changes. We make the assumption that as part of the process, they may have changed the bad character on their own.
We can also create a stored procedure which will execute the SQL for us:
create or replace procedure fix_us7_strings
(TABLE_NAME varchar2,
FIX_COL varchar2 )
authid current_user
as
orig_sql varchar2(1000);
TYPE cv_type IS REF CURSOR;
orig_cur cv_type;
begin
orig_sql:='update '||TABLE_NAME||' taborig1 set '||FIX_COL||'= (select utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 ('||FIX_COL||') from '||TABLE_NAME||'_vv@old6 where pk1=taborig1.pk1)
where pk1 in (
select tabnew.pk1 from '||TABLE_NAME||'@old6 taborig,'||TABLE_NAME||' tabnew,cnv_us7@old6
      where taborig.pk1=tabnew.pk1
          and myindx=tabnew.pk1
          and mycolumnname='''||FIX_COL||'''
          and mytablename='''||TABLE_NAME||'''
          and convert(taborig.'||FIX_COL||',''US7ASCII'',''WE8ISO8859P1'') = tabnew.'||FIX_COL||')';
dbms_output.put_line(orig_sql);
execute immediate orig_sql;
end;
exec fix_us7_strings('MY_FORUMS','DESCRIPTION');
exec fix_us7_strings('MY_CONTENTS','TITLE');
commit;
To validate this before and after, we can run something like:
select dump(description) from my_forums where pk1 in (select myindx from cnv_us7@old6 where mytablename='MY_FORUMS');
The above process fixes all the VARCHAR2s and CHARs. Now what about the CLOB columns?
Note that we're going to have some extra difficulty here, not just because we are dealing with CLOBs, but because we are working with CLOBs in 9i, whose functions have less CLOB-related functionality.
This procedure finds invalid US7ASCII strings inside a CLOB in 9i:
create or replace procedure find_us7_clob
(table_name varchar2,
fix_col varchar2)
authid current_user
as
orig_sql varchar2(1000);
type cv_type is REF CURSOR;
orig_table_cur cv_type;
my_chars_read NUMBER;
my_offset NUMBER;
my_problem NUMBER;
my_lob_size NUMBER;
my_indx_var NUMBER;
my_total_chars_read NUMBER;
my_output_chunk VARCHAR2(4000);
my_problem_flag NUMBER;
my_clob CLOB;
my_total_problems NUMBER;
ins_sql VARCHAR2(4000);
BEGIN
   DBMS_OUTPUT.ENABLE(1000000);
   orig_sql:='select pk1,dbms_lob.getlength('||FIX_COL||') as cloblength,'||fix_col||' from '||table_name||' where dbms_lob.getlength('||fix_col||') >0 and '||fix_col||' is not null order by pk1';
   open orig_table_cur for orig_sql;
   my_total_problems := 0;
   LOOP
        FETCH orig_table_cur INTO my_indx_var,my_lob_size,my_clob;
                EXIT WHEN orig_table_cur%NOTFOUND;
        my_offset :=1;
        my_chars_read := 512;
        my_problem_flag :=0;
        WHILE my_offset < my_lob_size and my_problem_flag =0
                LOOP
                DBMS_LOB.READ(my_clob,my_chars_read,my_offset,my_output_chunk);
                my_offset := my_offset + my_chars_read;
                IF my_output_chunk != CONVERT(CONVERT(my_output_chunk,'WE8ISO8859P1'),'US7ASCII')
                        THEN
                        -- DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Problem with '||my_indx_var);
                        -- DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(my_output_chunk);
                        my_problem_flag:=1;
                END IF;
        END LOOP;
        IF my_problem_flag=1
                THEN my_total_problems := my_total_problems +1;
                ins_sql:='insert into cnv_us7(mytablename,myindx,mycolumnname) values ('''||table_name||''','||my_indx_var||','''||fix_col||''')';
                execute immediate ins_sql;
                END IF;
   END LOOP;
   DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('We found '||my_total_problems||' problem rows in table '||table_name||', column '||fix_col||'.');
END;
And we can use SQL-generating SQL to find out which CLOBs have issues, out of all the ones in the database:
RESTOREDB> select 'exec find_us7_clob('''||table_name||''','''||column_name||''');' from user_tab_columns where data_type='CLOB';
exec find_us7_clob('MY_CONTENTS','DATA');
After completion, the CNV_US7 table looked like this:
RESTOREDB> set linesize 120 pagesize 100;
RESTOREDB> select count(1),mytablename,mycolumnname from cnv_us7
   where mytablename||' '||mycolumnname in (select table_name||' '||column_name from user_tab_columns
         where data_type='CLOB' )
      group by mytablename,mycolumnname;
COUNT(1) MYTABLENAME                                        MYCOLUMNNAME
     69703 MY_CONTENTS                                  DATA
On RESTOREDB, our 9i version, we will use this procedure (found many years ago on the internet):
create or replace procedure CLOB2BLOB (p_clob in out nocopy clob, p_blob in out nocopy blob) is
-- transforming CLOB to BLOB
l_off number default 1;
l_amt number default 4096;
l_offWrite number default 1;
l_amtWrite number;
l_str varchar2(4096 char);
begin
loop
dbms_lob.read ( p_clob, l_amt, l_off, l_str );
l_amtWrite := utl_raw.length ( utl_raw.cast_to_raw( l_str) );
dbms_lob.write( p_blob, l_amtWrite, l_offWrite,
utl_raw.cast_to_raw( l_str ) );
l_offWrite := l_offWrite + l_amtWrite;
l_off := l_off + l_amt;
l_amt := 4096;
end loop;
exception
when no_data_found then
NULL;
end;
We can test out the transformation of CLOBs to BLOBs with a single row like this:
drop table my_contents_lob;
Create table my_contents_lob (pk1 number,data blob);
DECLARE
      v_clob CLOB;
      v_blob BLOB;
    BEGIN
      SELECT data INTO v_clob FROM my_contents WHERE pk1 = 16 ;
      INSERT INTO my_contents_lob (pk1,data) VALUES (16,empty_blob() );
      SELECT data INTO v_blob FROM my_contents_lob WHERE pk1=16 FOR UPDATE;
      clob2blob (v_clob, v_blob);
    END;
select dbms_lob.getlength(data) from my_contents_lob;
DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(DATA)
                             329
SQL> select utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2(data) from my_contents_lob;
UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2(DATA)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam...
Now we need to push it through a loop. Unfortunately, I had trouble making the "SELECT INTO" dynamic. Thus I used a version of the procedure for each table. It's aesthetically displeasing, but at least it worked.
create table my_contents_lob(pk1 number,data blob);
create index my_contents_lob_pk1 on my_contents_lob(pk1) tablespace my_user_indx;
create or replace procedure blob_conversion_my_contents
(table_name varchar2,
fix_col varchar2)
authid current_user
as
orig_sql varchar2(1000);
type cv_type is REF CURSOR;
orig_table_cur cv_type;
my_chars_read NUMBER;
my_offset NUMBER;
my_problem NUMBER;
my_lob_size NUMBER;
my_indx_var NUMBER;
my_total_chars_read NUMBER;
my_output_chunk VARCHAR2(4000);
my_problem_flag NUMBER;
my_clob CLOB;
my_blob BLOB;
my_total_problems NUMBER;
new_sql VARCHAR2(4000);
BEGIN
DBMS_OUTPUT.ENABLE(1000000);
   orig_sql:='select pk1,dbms_lob.getlength('||FIX_COL||') as cloblength,'||fix_col||' from '||table_name||' where pk1 in (select myindx from cnv_us7 where mytablename='''||TABLE_NAME||''' and mycolumnname='''||FIX_COL||''') order by pk1';
   open orig_table_cur for orig_sql;
   LOOP
        FETCH orig_table_cur INTO my_indx_var,my_lob_size,my_clob;
                EXIT WHEN orig_table_cur%NOTFOUND;
        new_sql:='INSERT INTO '||table_name||'_lob(pk1,'||fix_col||') values ('||my_indx_var||',empty_blob() )';
        dbms_output.put_line(new_sql);
      execute immediate new_sql;
-- Here's the bit that I had trouble making dynamic. Feel free to let me know what I am doing wrong.
-- new_sql:='SELECT '||fix_col||' INTO my_blob from '||table_name||'_lob where pk1='||my_indx_var||' FOR UPDATE';
--        dbms_output.put_line(new_sql);
        select data into my_blob from my_contents_lob where pk1=my_indx_var FOR UPDATE;
      clob2blob(my_clob,my_blob);
   END LOOP;
   CLOSE orig_table_cur;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Completed program');
END;
exec blob_conversion_my_contents('MY_CONTENTS','DATA');
Verify that things work properly:
select dump( utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2(data)) from my_contents_lob where pk1=xxxx;
This should let you see see characters > 150. Thus, the method works.
We can now take this data, export it from RESTORECLONE
exp file=a.dmp buffer=4000000 userid=system/XXXXXX tables=my_user.my_contents rows=y
and import the data on prodclone
imp file=a.dmp fromuser=my_user touser=my_user userid=system/XXXXXX buffer=4000000;
For paranoia's sake, double check that it worked properly:
select dump( utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2(data)) from my_contents_lob;
On our 10g PRODCLONE, we'll use these stored procedures:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION CLOB2BLOB(L_CLOB CLOB) RETURN BLOB IS
L_BLOB BLOB;
L_SRC_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_DEST_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_BLOB_CSID NUMBER := DBMS_LOB.DEFAULT_CSID;
V_LANG_CONTEXT NUMBER := DBMS_LOB.DEFAULT_LANG_CTX;
L_WARNING NUMBER;
L_AMOUNT NUMBER;
BEGIN
DBMS_LOB.CREATETEMPORARY(L_BLOB, TRUE);
L_SRC_OFFSET := 1;
L_DEST_OFFSET := 1;
L_AMOUNT := DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(L_CLOB);
DBMS_LOB.CONVERTTOBLOB(L_BLOB,
L_CLOB,
L_AMOUNT,
L_SRC_OFFSET,
L_DEST_OFFSET,
1,
V_LANG_CONTEXT,
L_WARNING);
RETURN L_BLOB;
END;
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION BLOB2CLOB(L_BLOB BLOB) RETURN CLOB IS
L_CLOB CLOB;
L_SRC_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_DEST_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_BLOB_CSID NUMBER := DBMS_LOB.DEFAULT_CSID;
V_LANG_CONTEXT NUMBER := DBMS_LOB.DEFAULT_LANG_CTX;
L_WARNING NUMBER;
L_AMOUNT NUMBER;
BEGIN
DBMS_LOB.CREATETEMPORARY(L_CLOB, TRUE);
L_SRC_OFFSET := 1;
L_DEST_OFFSET := 1;
L_AMOUNT := DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(L_BLOB);
DBMS_LOB.CONVERTTOCLOB(L_CLOB,
L_BLOB,
L_AMOUNT,
L_SRC_OFFSET,
L_DEST_OFFSET,
1,
V_LANG_CONTEXT,
L_WARNING);
RETURN L_CLOB;
END;
And now, for the piece de' resistance, we need a BLOB to CLOB conversion that assumes that the BLOB data is stored initially in WE8ISO8859P1.
To find correct CSID for WE8ISO8859P1, we can use this query:
select nls_charset_id('WE8ISO8859P1') from dual;
Gives "31"
create or replace FUNCTION BLOB2CLOBASC(L_BLOB BLOB) RETURN CLOB IS
L_CLOB CLOB;
L_SRC_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_DEST_OFFSET NUMBER;
L_BLOB_CSID NUMBER := 31;      -- treat blob as WE8ISO8859P1
V_LANG_CONTEXT NUMBER := 31;   -- treat resulting clob as WE8ISO8850P1
L_WARNING NUMBER;
L_AMOUNT NUMBER;
BEGIN
DBMS_LOB.CREATETEMPORARY(L_CLOB, TRUE);
L_SRC_OFFSET := 1;
L_DEST_OFFSET := 1;
L_AMOUNT := DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(L_BLOB);
DBMS_LOB.CONVERTTOCLOB(L_CLOB,
L_BLOB,
L_AMOUNT,
L_SRC_OFFSET,
L_DEST_OFFSET,
L_BLOB_CSID,
V_LANG_CONTEXT,
L_WARNING);
RETURN L_CLOB;
END;
select dump(dbms_lob.substr(blob2clobasc(data),4000,1)) from my_contents_lob;
Now, we can compare these:
select dbms_lob.compare(blob2clob(old.data),new.data) from my_contents new,my_contents_lob old where new.pk1=old.pk1;
DBMS_LOB.COMPARE(BLOB2CLOB(OLD.DATA),NEW.DATA)
                                                             0
                                                             0
                                                             0
Vs
select dbms_lob.compare(blob2clobasc(old.data),new.data) from my_contents new,my_contents_lob old where new.pk1=old.pk1;
DBMS_LOB.COMPARE(BLOB2CLOBASC(OLD.DATA),NEW.DATA)
                                                               -1
                                                               -1
                                                               -1
update my_contents a set data=(select blob2clobasc(data) from my_contents_lob b where a.pk1= b.pk1)
    where pk1 in (select al.pk1 from my_contents_lob al where dbms_lob.compare(blob2clob(al.data),a.data) =0 );
SQL> select dump(dbms_lob.substr(data,4000,1)) from my_contents where pk1 in (select pk1 from my_contents_lob);
Confirms that we're now working properly.
To run across all the _LOB tables we've created:
[oracle@RESTORECLONE ~]$ exp file=all_fixed_lobs.dmp buffer=4000000 userid=my_user/mypass tables=MY_CONTENTS_LOB,MY_FORUM_LOB...
[oracle@RESTORECLONE ~]$ scp all_fixed_lobs.dmp jboulier@PRODCLONE:/tmp
And then on PRODCLONE we can import:
imp file=all_fixed_lobs.dmp buffer=4000000 userid=system/XXXXXXX fromuser=my_user touser=my_user
Instead of running the above update statement for all the affected tables, we can use a simple stored procedure:
create or replace procedure fix_us7_CLOBS
(TABLE_NAME varchar2,
     FIX_COL varchar2 )
    authid current_user
    as
     orig_sql varchar2(1000);
     bak_sql varchar2(1000);
    begin
    dbms_output.put_line('Creating '||TABLE_NAME||'_PRECONV to preserve the original data in the table');
    bak_sql:='create table '||TABLE_NAME||'_preconv as select pk1,'||FIX_COL||' from '||TABLE_NAME||' where pk1 in (select pk1 from '||TABLE_NAME||'_LOB) ';
    execute immediate bak_sql;
    orig_sql:='update '||TABLE_NAME||' tabnew set '||FIX_COL||'= (select blob2clobasc ('||FIX_COL||') from '||TABLE_NAME||'_LOB taborig where tabnew.pk1=taborig.pk1)
   where pk1 in (
   select a.pk1 from '||TABLE_NAME||'_LOB a,'||TABLE_NAME||' b
      where a.pk1=b.pk1
             and dbms_lob.compare(blob2clob(a.'||FIX_COL||'),b.'||FIX_COL||') = 0 )';
    -- dbms_output.put_line(orig_sql);
    execute immediate orig_sql;
   end;
Now we can run the procedure and it fixes everything for our previously-broken tables, keeping the changed rows -- just in case -- in a table called table_name_PRECONV.
set serveroutput on time on timing on;
exec fix_us7_clobs('MY_CONTENTS','DATA');
commit;
After confirming with the client that the changes work -- and haven't noticeably broken anything else -- the same routines can be carefully run against the actual production database.

We converted using the database using scripts I developed. I'm not quite sure how we converted is relevant, other than saying that we did not use the Oracle conversion utility (not csscan, but the GUI Java tool).
A summary:
1) We replaced the lossy characters by parsing a csscan output file
2) After re-scanning with csscan and coming up clean, our DBA converted the database to AL32UTF8 (changed the parameter file, changing the character set, switched the semantics to char, etc).
3) Final step was changing existing tables to use char semantics by changing the table schema for VARCHAR2 columns
Any specific steps I cannot easily answer, I worked with a DBA at our company to do this work. I handled the character replacement / DDL changes and the DBA ran csscan & performed the database config changes.
Our actual error message:
ORA-31011: XML parsing failed
ORA-19202: Error occurred in XML processing
LPX-00210: expected '<' instead of '�Error at line 1
31011. 00000 - "XML parsing failed"
*Cause:    XML parser returned an error while trying to parse the document.
*Action:   Check if the document to be parsed is valid.
Error at Line: 24 Column: 15
This seems to match the the document ID referenced below. I will ask our DBA to pull it up and review it.
Please advise if more information is needed from my end.

Required character set conversion ?

I am getting the following error while trying to import data from 10g to an 8i database. Is there any setting that needs to setup before performing this import?
IMP-00016: required character set conversion (type 1 to 871) not supported
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Although I have never tried to skip two versions of the DB during a "reverse" export/import, you should in theory be able to do this using the 8i exp/imp executables rather than the 10g executables. Give it a try!
Greg Pike
http://www.singlequery.com

IMP-00016: required character set conversion (type 1 to 871) not supported

I am running Oracle DB: 8.1.7.4
Hit a problem when I export from Source DB: US7ASCII
and then, import into Target DB: UTF8.
Is there any workaround if this is the only export dump available?
Many thanks in advance.

Thanks for the prompt reply.
Both source and target are in the same version: 8.1.7.4.
The error gotten:
Import: Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production on Fri Aug 22 15:37:37 2008
(c) Copyright 2000 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Connected to: Oracle8i Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production
JServer Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production
IMP-00016: required character set conversion (type 1 to 871) not supported
IMP-00000: Import terminated unsuccessfully
Many thanks in advance.

IMP-00016 required character set conversion (type 178 to 871) not supported

Hi, I am importing Portal release 2 handson to our test database whose character set is UTF8,durning importing, the following error message comes out 'IMP-00016: required character set conversion (type 178 to 871) not supported',what should i do? thank u in advance . My mail address is:[email protected] .

Thanks for the prompt reply.
Both source and target are in the same version: 8.1.7.4.
The error gotten:
Import: Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production on Fri Aug 22 15:37:37 2008
(c) Copyright 2000 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Connected to: Oracle8i Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production
JServer Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production
IMP-00016: required character set conversion (type 1 to 871) not supported
IMP-00000: Import terminated unsuccessfully
Many thanks in advance.

The ADO NET Source was unable to process the data. ORA-64203: Destination buffer too small to hold CLOB data after character set conversion.

We developed a SSIS Package to pull the data From Oracle source to Sql Server 2012. Here we used ADO.Net source to pull the records from Source but getting the below error after pulling some 40K records.
[ADO NET Source [2]] Error: The ADO NET Source was unable to process the data. ORA-64203: Destination buffer too small to hold CLOB data after character set conversion.
[SSIS.Pipeline] Error: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_PRIMEOUTPUTFAILED.
The PrimeOutput method on ADO NET Source returned error code 0xC02090F5.
The component returned a failure code when the pipeline engine called PrimeOutput().
The meaning of the failure code is defined by the component,
but the error is fatal and the pipeline stopped executing.
There may be error messages posted before this with more
information about the failure.
Anything that we can do to fix this?

Hi,
Tried both....
* Having schema type as Nvarchar(max). - Getting the same error.
* Instead of ADO.Net Source used OLEDB Source with driver as " Oracle Provide for OLE DB" Getting error as below.
[OLE DB Source [478]] Error: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_OLEDBERROR. An OLE DB error has occurred. Error code: 0x80004005.
[SSIS.Pipeline] Error: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_PRIMEOUTPUTFAILED. The PrimeOutput method on OLE DB Source returned error code 0xC0202009. The component returned a failure
code when the pipeline engine called PrimeOutput(). The meaning of the failure code is defined by the component, but the error is fatal and the pipeline stopped executing. There may be error messages posted before this with more information about the
failure.
Additional Info:
* Here the Source task is getting failed not the conversion or destination task.
Thanks,
Loganathan A.

Character set Conversion (US7ASCII to AL32UTF8) -- ORA-31011 problem

Hello,
We've run into some problems as part of our character set conversion from US7ASCII to AL32UTF8. The latest problem is that we have a query that works in US7ASCII, but after converting to AL32UTF8 it no longer works and generates an ORA-31011 error. This is very concerning to us as this error indicates an XML parsing problem and we are doing no XML whatsoever in our DB. We do not have XML columns (nor even CLOBs or BLOBs) nor XML tables and it's not XMLDB.
For reference, we're running 11.2.0.2.0 over Solaris.
Has anyone seen this kind of problem before?
If need be, I'll find a way to post table definitions. However, it's safe to assume that we are only using DATE, VARCHAR2 and NUMBER column types in these tables. All of the tables are local to the DB.
Thanks

We converted using the database using scripts I developed. I'm not quite sure how we converted is relevant, other than saying that we did not use the Oracle conversion utility (not csscan, but the GUI Java tool).
A summary:
1) We replaced the lossy characters by parsing a csscan output file
2) After re-scanning with csscan and coming up clean, our DBA converted the database to AL32UTF8 (changed the parameter file, changing the character set, switched the semantics to char, etc).
3) Final step was changing existing tables to use char semantics by changing the table schema for VARCHAR2 columns
Any specific steps I cannot easily answer, I worked with a DBA at our company to do this work. I handled the character replacement / DDL changes and the DBA ran csscan & performed the database config changes.
Our actual error message:
ORA-31011: XML parsing failed
ORA-19202: Error occurred in XML processing
LPX-00210: expected '<' instead of '�Error at line 1
31011. 00000 - "XML parsing failed"
*Cause: XML parser returned an error while trying to parse the document.
*Action: Check if the document to be parsed is valid.
Error at Line: 24 Column: 15
This seems to match the the document ID referenced below. I will ask our DBA to pull it up and review it.
Please advise if more information is needed from my end.

CSSCAN for database character set conversion failing with ORA-01578

Hi ,
CSSCAN for database character set conversion failing with ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted (file # 84, block # 23930). please help me out in this regard.
Thanks,
Sravan.

Hi Anand,
Thanks for your update. The segment is a table not an index in my case. And i got this error while running CSSCAN on Apps database for character set conversion to UTF8 from WE8ISO8859P1. Please find the snapshot below for your reference.
SQL> select segment_name, segment_type, owner from dba_extents where file_id = 84 and 23930 between block_id and block_id + blocks - 1;
SEGMENT_NAME
SEGMENT_TYPE OWNER
EDW_LOOKUP_M
TABLE POA
SQL> ANALYZE TABLE POA.EDW_LOOKUP_M VALIDATE STRUCTURE CASCADE;
ANALYZE TABLE POA.EDW_LOOKUP_M VALIDATE STRUCTURE CASCADE
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted (file # 84, block # 23930)
ORA-01110: data file 84: '/d911/oracle/dbcondata/poad01.dbf'
Thanks,
Sravan.

Character Set conversion fails

Hi,
We have 2 databases, both are UTF8. One database fetches the data from other via a DB Link. Say there are 2 databases A and B. A fetches data from B. A is in WE8ISO8859P1 character set and B is in EEC8EUROPA3 . While fetching the data european characters come as junk in database A. I tried using convert but that too fails.
Can you please suggest if there is any way where i can have the characters presereved?
Thanks.

Hi Deng,
I notice you had a similar problem to james chen, regarding
character set conversion errors and that you did indeed fix
this problem?
Re: DB Link not working
I'd really appreciate it if you could please can you post
onto James' query and let him and other members know your
solution.
Given that members of the Designer community use the forum
to work together and help other members, I think they would
also appreciate this information!
Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Dominic
Designer Prod Mgt
Oracle Corp

XML data from BLOB to CLOB - character set conversion

Hi All,
I'm trying to solve a problem with a character set conversion in PL/SQL in the following scenario:
1. source is an XML as a BLOB variable.
2. target is an XML as a CLOB variable.
3. the problem I have is the following:
- database character set is set to UTF-8
- XML character set could be anything (UTF-8, ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-2, ASCII, ...)
- I need to write a procedure which converts the source BLOB content into the target CLOB taking into account the XML encoding and converts it into the DB default character set (UTF8).
I've been able to implement a simple conversion function. However, this function expects static XML encoding ISO-8859-1. The main part of the function looks as follows:
buffer := UTL_RAW.cast_to_varchar2(
UTL_RAW.convert(
DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(source_blob_variable, 16000, pos)
, 'American_America.UTF8'
, 'American_America.we8iso8859p1')
Does anyone have an idea how to rewrite the code to handle "any" XML encoding in the source BLOB file? In other words, is there a function in Oracle which converts XML character set names into Oracle character set values (ISO-8859-1 to we8iso8859p1, UTF-8 to UTF8, ...)?
Thanks a lot for any help.
Julius

I want to pass a BLOB to some "createXML" procedure and get a proper XMLType in UTF8 character set, properly converted from whatever character set is the input in.As per documentation the generated XML has always the encoding set at the client side depending on NLS_LANG (default UTF-8), regardless of the input encoding, so I don't see a need to parse the PI of the XML:
C:\>echo %NLS_LANG%
%NLS_LANG%
C:\>sqlplus
SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on Wed Apr 30 08:54:12 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
SQL> var cur refcursor
SQL>
SQL> declare
2     b   blob := utl_raw.cast_to_raw ('<a>myxml</a>');
3 begin
4     open :cur for select xmlroot (xmltype (utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 (b))) xml from dual;
5 end;
6 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>
SQL> print cur
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><a>myxml</a>
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
C:\>set NLS_LANG=GERMAN_GERMANY.WE8ISO8859P1
C:\>sqlplus
SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on Mi Apr 30 08:55:02 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
SQL> var cur refcursor
SQL>
SQL> declare
2     b   blob := utl_raw.cast_to_raw ('<a>myxml</a>');
3 begin
4     open :cur for select xmlroot (xmltype (utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2 (b))) xml from dual;
5 end;
6 /
PL/SQL-Prozedur erfolgreich abgeschlossen.
SQL>
SQL> print cur
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<a>myxml</a>

UTF8 character set conversion for chinese Language

Hi friends,
Would like to some basic explanation on UTF8 feature,what does it help while converting the data from chinese language.
Would like to know what all characters this UTF8 will not support while converting from chinese language.
Thanks & Regards
Ramya Nomula

Not exactly sure what you are looking for, but on MetaLink, there are numerous detailed papers on NLS character sets, conversions, etc.
Bottom line is that for traditional Chinese characters (since they are more complicated), they require 4 bytes to store the characters (such as UTF-8, and AL32UTF8). Some mid-eastern characters sets also fall in this category.
Do a google search on "utf8 al32utf8 difference", and you will get some good explanations.
e.g., http://decipherinfosys.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/difference-between-utf8-and-al32utf8-character-sets-in-oracle/
Recently, one of our clients had a question on the differences between these two character sets since they were in the process of making their application global. In an upcoming whitepaper, we will discuss in detail what it takes (from a RDBMS perspective) to address localization and globalization issues. As far as these two character sets go in Oracle, the only difference between AL32UTF8 and UTF8 character sets is that AL32UTF8 stores characters beyond U+FFFF as four bytes (exactly as Unicode defines UTF-8). Oracle’s “UTF8” stores these characters as a sequence of two UTF-16 surrogate characters encoded using UTF-8 (or six bytes per character). Besides this storage difference, another difference is better support for supplementary characters in AL32UTF8 character set.
You may also consider posting your question on the Globalization Suport forum which pertains more to these types of questions.
Globalization Support

Oracle to Mysql character set conversion problem!!! PLZ IGNORE

Hi Experts,
I have created a database link from Oracle 10g to Mysql 5.
I have installed Oracle Gateway 11g for this purpose.
When i retreive the data from sql plus the text is displayed as question marks.
Oracle 10g Database character set is WE8MSWIN1252
Mysql character set --->latin1
Character set of ODBC connector for mysql is latin7
Character set in the parameter file of HS folder is WE8MSWIN1252When i retrieve data from sql developer the text is fine(as i think it directly takes the character set of target) but
when i login from sqlplus i get question marks!
I have another post in Heterogeneous Connectivity forum
Re: Oracle to Mysql character set conversion problem!!! PLZ HELP
Kindly update your comments there,
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@2
Appreciate your help,
regards
Edited by: user10243788 on Apr 21, 2010 3:25 AM

It is OK to post a globalization-related question in this forum in addition to the forum pertaining to the main technology. Not all experts follow all possible forums on OTN. Of course, you should cross-link the posts to let people merge the answers.
Regarding the problem itself, make sure that SQL*Plus has the right NLS_LANG setting in the environment. On Windows, in the Command Prompt:
C:\> set NLS_LANG=.WE8PC850
C:\> sqlplus ...On Unix:
$ setenv NLS_LANG .WE8ISO8859P1 (or NLS_LANG=.WE8ISO8859P1; export NLS_LANG)
$ sqlplus ...-- Sergiusz

Character set conversion in advanced replication environment 10g

we have a replication environment with 5 databases using oracle 10g. one master definition site, 4 master sites. we want to change database character set in replication environment.
Does somebody has experience about database character set conversion in replication environment.
Thanks

842106 wrote:
Hi All,
I am currently facing a strange issue while loading a csv into oracle BE table.
The data is coming as TÃ©cnicas but I need to store it as Técnicas . I think there is some character set issue for which data is coming as in distorted manner .
I am using oracle 10G enterprise edition .
Any help is greatly appreciated.How do I ask a question on the forums?
SQL and PL/SQL FAQ
what do you observe when you inspect the actual content of the CSV file?

Import error character set conversion

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