AL16UTF16 as nchar set

Question

I'm trying to wrap my head around multi-byte character set support and I'm having quite the time. Our production database was created before my time, so I don't have a good reason why it was created with the WE8MSWIN1252 character set, but here's our setup.
10.2.0.2 ( upgraded from 8.1.7->9.2.0 ) EE on AIX 5.3
character set WE8MSWIN1252
Ncharset AL16UTF16
I created a test table
create table balvey.tsting (COL1 VARCHAR2(50), COL2 NVARCHAR2(50), id number, descrip varchar2(30));
and inserted some records via different connections from a windows client. And none of them really gave me what I was expecting. I used sqldev connected to 10.2 db with AL32UTF32 character set and the following select to get the greek phi symbol 'Φ' and then copy/pasted from there into each insert statement.
From Putty connection on win client to the server.
insert into balvey.tsting values
('.', '.', 1, 'phi aix/slqplus 1252');
insert into balvey.tsting values
(chr(52902), chr(52902), 2, '52902 aix/sqlplus 1252');
From sql*plus on win client.
insert into balvey.tsting values
('F', 'F', 3, 'phi win/sqlplus 1252');
insert into balvey.tsting values
(chr(52902), chr(52902), 4, '52902 win/sqlplus 1252');
From sqldeveloper on win client
insert into balvey.tsting values
('Φ', 'Φ', 5, 'Φ win/sqldev 1252');
insert into balvey.tsting values
(chr(52902), chr(52902), 6, '52902 win/sqldev 1252');
Then selecting back out of the database from each client application I didn't get the Φ from any of the records. It didn't surprise me that I didn't get it from the varchar2 column, but I thought I would have gotten it from the nvarchar2 columns, at least from the sqldev application.
here are the results from selecting back out via each client app.
from aix client
system@JDEDEV> select * from balvey.tsting order by id;
COL1                           COL2                                   ID DESCRIP
.                              .                                       1 phi aix/slqplus
¦                              ¦                                       2 52902 aix/sqlplus
F                              F                                       3 phi win/sqlplus
¦                              ¦                                       4 52902 win/sqlplus
¦                              ¦                                       5 ¦ win/sqldev
¦                              ¦                                       6 52902 win/sqldev
6 rows selected.
from sqlplus on win client
SQL> select * from balvey.tsting order by id;
COL1                           COL2                                   ID DESCRIP
.                              .                                       1 phi aix/slqplus
¦                              ¦                                       2 52902 aix/sqlplus
F                              F                                       3 phi win/sqlplus
¦                              ¦                                       4 52902 win/sqlplus
¦                              ¦                                       5 ¦ win/sqldev
¦                              ¦                                       6 52902 win/sqldev
from sqldev on win client
select * from balvey.tsting order by id;
.     .     1     phi aix/slqplus
¦     ¦     2     52902 aix/sqlplus
F     F     3     phi win/sqlplus
¦     ¦     4     52902 win/sqlplus
¦     ¦     5     ¦ win/sqldev
¦     ¦     6     52902 win/sqldev Edited by: PktAces on Jan 7, 2009 12:33 PM
Edited by: PktAces on Jan 7, 2009 12:35 PM

Answer 1

Well, I'm not running into ora- errors or using an 8i client to connect, but I think in-directly you have helped to clear up some of the confusion. That ML note points to ML #227330.1 and point #14 in that note is, "14. I'm inserting <special character> in a Nchar or Nvarchar2 col but it comes back as ? or ¿ ...". I wasn't necessarily getting the ? or ¿ but that lead me to the suggestion to add the setting to SqlDeveloper to allow the N flag in the insert statement, like so:
insert into balvey.tsting values
('Φ', N'Φ', 9, 'NΦ win/sqldev');
Which I had already tried but it didn't work until the setting change. Then when selecting back out via sqldeveloper does return the Φ from the NVARCHAR2 field. It also pointed to using sqlloader to load from a flat file due to sqlplus not being a UNICODE application.
So while I'm still far from understanding all there is to know about character sets, I'm not quite as confused now. Thanks.