ODBC Connection to Postgres: Yet another encoding problem

Question

Hello, all!
I have a dblink to Postgres server via ODBC. It works, but with national characters encoding issue.
O/S: Oracle Linux 6.2 x86-64
Oracle - Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production
Oracle V$NLS_PARAMETERS:
PARAMETER
VALUE
NLS_LANGUAGE
AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY
AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY
$
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY
AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS
NLS_CALENDAR
GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT
DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE
AMERICAN
NLS_CHARACTERSET
CL8MSWIN1251
NLS_SORT
BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT
HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT
DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT
HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT
DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY
$
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET
AL16UTF16
NLS_COMP
BINARY
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS
BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP
FALSE
unixODBC - downloaded latest version and installed manualy:
$ odbcinst -j
unixODBC 2.3.1
DRIVERS............: /usr/local/etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /usr/local/etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /usr/local/etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /usr/local/etc/odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8
Postgres driver - v09.02.010 dowloaded from postgresql.org and installed manually.
odbcinst.ini:
[PostgreSQL]
Description     = ODBC for PostgreSQL
Driver          = /usr/local/lib/psqlodbcw.so
Setup           =
Driver64        =
Setup64         =
FileUsage       = 1
odbc.ini:
[ARMKU]
Description             = PostgreSQL
Driver                  = PostgreSQL
Trace                   = No
TraceFile               =
Database                = postgres
Servername              = 10.11.11.111
Username                = ges
Password                = password
Port                    = 5432
Protocol                =
ReadOnly                = Yes
RowVersioning           =
ShowSystemTables        = Yes
ShowOidColumn           =
FakeOidIndex            =
ConnSettings            =
initARMKU.ora:
# This is a sample agent init file that contains the HS parameters that are
# needed for the Database Gateway for ODBC
# HS init parameters
HS_FDS_CONNECT_INFO=ARMKU
HS_FDS_TRACE_LEVEL=DEBUG
HS_FDS_SHAREABLE_NAME=/usr/local/lib/libodbc.so
HS_NLS_NCHAR= UCS2
HS_LANGUAGE=AMERICAN_AMERICA.CL8MSWIN1251
# ODBC specific environment variables
set ODBCINI=/usr/local/etc/odbc.ini
# Environment variables required for the non-Oracle system
#set <envvar>=<value>
Postgres psql utility returns:
Password for user ges:
psql (8.4.13, server 8.4.8)
Type "help" for help.
postgres=> \l
                                          List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding |      Collation      |        Ctype        |   Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+---------------------+---------------------+-----------------------
postgres  | postgres | UTF8     | Russian_Russia.1251 | Russian_Russia.1251 | postgres=CTc/postgres: ges_group=Tc/postgres
template0 | postgres | UTF8     | Russian_Russia.1251 | Russian_Russia.1251 | =c/postgres: postgres=CTc/postgres
template1 | postgres | UTF8     | Russian_Russia.1251 | Russian_Russia.1251 | =c/postgres: postgres=CTc/postgres
(3 rows)
postgres=> \encoding
UTF8
So, i can read tables from Postgres database, but i can't translate russian symbols from postgres's UTF8 encoding to my CL8MSWIN1251:
SQL> SELECT "name" FROM "node_area"@armku;
name
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13
If i change HS_LANGUAGE parameter to UTF16, i can import them in nvarchar2 properly, but it's not what i need.
Please help!

Answer 1

Not sure if that hack will work:
set in the odbc.ini within the Postgres DSN:
ConnSettings
=SET CLIENT_ENCODING to 'ASCII'
Maybe it will then maps youe Unicode Postgres during connection handshake to 8bit characters.
But that's really just a hack without any guarantee that it will work because your Postgres database is using UTF-8 encoding and your Oracle database is using CL8 character set. So You can't import them into varchar2. This will only work with a Unicode Oracle database character set, else it needs to map  the PostgreSQL columns to a nvarchar.
- Klaus