Character Set Migration - Arabic & English Language Support

Hi,
Sofware Specifications:
OS Version : Windows 2003 EE Server, SP2, 32-Bit
DB Version : 9.2.0.1
Application : Lotus Domino 6.5
Existing Set Up:
DB CHAR SET : WE8MSWIN 1252
National Character Set : AL16UTF16
NLS_LANG : NA
Now the customer extended their business in EGYPT.
They need the existing database to support ARABIC & ENGLISH Languages.
Kindly let me know how to do this character set migration and achieve the client specification.
Regards
Suresh

Check Metalink
Note:179133.1
Subject:      The correct NLS_LANG in a Windows Environment
Note:187739.1
Subject:      NLS Setup in a Multilingual Database Environment
Note:260023.1
Subject:      Difference between AR8MSWIN1256 and AR8ISO8859P6 characterset
Also, please list all the steps you have performed till now

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New white paper: Character Set Migration Best Practices

This paper can be found on the Globalization Home Page at:
http://technet.oracle.com/tech/globalization/pdf/mwp.pdf
This paper outlines the best practices for database character set
migration that has been utilized on behalf of hundreds of customers
successfully. Following these methods will help determine what
strategies are best suited for your environment and will help minimize
risk and downtime. This paper also highlights migration to Unicode.
Many customers today are finding Unicode to be essential to supporting
their global businesses.

Sorry about that. I posted that too soon. It should become available today (Monday Aug 22nd).
Doug

Clarification on Character set migration from US7ASCII to UTF8

Hi,
I need clarification on the below.
I need to migrate the database from US7ASCII to UTF8.
For this I ran csscan for user "TEST" as well as against full database.
Below log is the csscan output against full database. but my application is depended on TEST schema only. Shall I need to migrate SYS objects data as shown below or it's not required?. If required how to migrate these objects data?
Looking forward you help.
USER.TABLE Convertible Exceptional
SYS.METASTYLESHEET 58 TEST.Table_1 9 0
TEST.Table_2 11 0
TEST.Table_3 17 0
TEST.Table_4 11 0
[Distribution of Convertible Data per Column]
USER.TABLE|COLUMN Convertible Exceptional
SYS.METASTYLESHEET|STYLESHEET 58 0
Thanks,
Sankar

I think you need to migrate all schemas data not only one application schema because
the database character set is common to all CHAR, VARCHAR2, LONG and CLOB colums
for any tables in any schema.
In your case (US7ASCII to UTF8), you need to use export/import because:
Another restriction of the ALTER DATABASE CHARACTER SET statement is that it can be used only when the character set migration is between two single-byte character sets or between two multibyte character sets. If the planned character set migration is from a single-byte character set to a multibyte character set, then use the Export and Import utilities.
(see http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96529/ch10.htm#1009904)

How to change character set to arabic in Develper suite forms 10g

Dear all,
Our company wants migrate oracle forms 4.5/6i applications to Oracle developer suite 10g version.
They also want there database to upgrade from 9i to 10g.
They gave me test machine, on which windows xp is installed and i did the following:-
1,Installed Oracle 10g Xe edition database.
2,Installed Oracle 10g Devloper suite(oracle forms, Oracle reports).
3, Configured the connection of Oracle Developer suite 10g to Oracle Database 10g.
4, Loaded Data into the 10g database. *( they are few columns like DEPARTMENT_NAME_ARB, FUNCTION_NAME_ARB which is supposed to show in arabic fonts, as it is in arabic in 9i database, now they are showing in some special characters)*
What I would like to know is: Is there a way through which i can set characterset?
Is it in the database in which i have to make character set change?
Is it in the oracle developer suite application in which i have to make character set change?
Is it in the registry in which i have to make changes?
please help.

Hi freinds,
It is very encouraging to see your replies, i apologize for the late reponse, i still got no success with updating PROPS$,
I relgiously followed all the instructions given to me by all of you. Like u could see in my previous posts
Luckiily, i am able to insert one row at a time manaually iin arabic and in english by pressing (ALT+SHIFT).
When i create datablocks in forms builder, i do see output in arabic.
When i create report in group style i do see ouptput in arabic.
i have thousands of rows(in GB's) which needs to be inserted in this new database 10g XE edition (downloaded from oracle)
I have attempted multiple times insertion of data by just running script, or simply copying numerous insert statement rows from notepad to sql*plus, unluckily it alwayz retreived the special charachters rather than retreiving arabic characters.
Is there a way to insert data in this new oracle 10g xe editon database via oracle developer suite 10g forms/reports?
Do I have to use inbuilt data load/unload utilities in oracle 10g xe edition?
Do I have to install sql*loader separately to load the data?
Do you think TOAD can help in this?
Could you please tell me how to add snap shots in this post?(user10947262)
Here are the following details of National Language Parameter Value
Before
NLS_CALENDAR     GREGORIAN
NLS_CHARACTERSET     AL32UTF8 (IS this multibyte (UTF-8) character set SARAH?)
NLS_COMP     BINARY
NLS_CURRENCY     $
NLS_DATE_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE     AMERICAN
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY     $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY     AMERICA
NLS_LANGUAGE     AMERICAN
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS     BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET     AL16UTF16
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP     FALSE
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS     .,
NLS_SORT     BINARY
NLS_TERRITORY     AMERICA
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIME_FORMAT     HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT     HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
After
NLS_CALENDAR     GREGORIAN
NLS_CHARACTERSET     AL32UTF8
NLS_COMP     BINARY
NLS_CURRENCY     ر.س.
NLS_DATE_FORMAT     DD/MM/RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE     ARABIC
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY     ر.س.
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY     SAUDI ARABIA
NLS_LANGUAGE     ARABIC
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS     BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET     AL16UTF16
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP     FALSE
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS     .,
NLS_SORT     ARABIC
NLS_TERRITORY     SAUDI ARABIA
NLS_TIME_FORMAT     HH12:MI:SSXFF PM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT     DD/MM/RR HH12:MI:SSXFF PM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT     DD/MM/RR HH12:MI:SSXFF PM TZR
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT     HH12:MI:SSXFF PM TZR
Certainly Christian, i dont want to screw my oracle 10g database xe edition software and installation, and i agree and hope with this that creating new database and doing exporting and importing will work for me. (XE edition doesnt give option to create new database, i need to install 10g release2 media pack from edelivery)
However, with the above informatiion provided, Is it really needed?
Please help me.
Thanks and Regards

Configure database for arabic data language support.

Dear Masters,
i m creating database in arabic language support. all configuration has been done. but while i m getting error in putty.
SQL> select # from tab;
select # from tab
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00911: ??? ??? ????
SQL> show parameter nls
NAME TYPE VALUE
nls_calendar string
nls_comp string BINARY
nls_currency string
nls_date_format string
nls_date_language string
nls_dual_currency string
nls_iso_currency string
nls_language string ARABIC
nls_length_semantics string BYTE
nls_nchar_conv_excp string FALSE
nls_numeric_characters string
NAME TYPE VALUE
nls_sort string
nls_territory string SAUDI ARABIA
nls_time_format string
nls_timestamp_format string
nls_timestamp_tz_format string
nls_time_tz_format string
SQL>
SQL> SELECT value$ FROM sys.props$ WHERE name = 'NLS_CHARACTERSET' ;
VALUE$
AL32UTF8
but while i m trying to insert data from putty(putty is also configured on UTF8) i m getting ???????? on command prompt.
even form6i also throwing same ????????
kindly guide where i m wrong.
THanks in Advs

Where your database server is located does not matter, AIX or Windows or other os.
And AL32UTF8 would mean a Unicode database which means it may be used to store basically any language characters.
You need to look into client side locale settings, if e.g. windows pcs are setup properly or putty terminal configuration is correct.
Please download and use Oracle SQL Developer, as it is Unicode "aware" and can be used to verify character data.
In a Windows console window (cmd prompt), you need to take care of oem code page and matching char set part of NLS_LANG to indicate what's in use.
c:\>chcp
Active code page: 850
c:\>set nls_lang
nls_lang=.we8pc850
c:\>sqlplus test
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Mon Sep 24 21:44:35 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Enter password:
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production
SQL> select unistr('abcåäö\2514\2524\2534') from dual;
UNISTR('A
abcåäö└┤┴
c:\>chcp 1256
Active code page: 1256
c:\>set nls_lang=.ar8mswin1256
c:\>sqlplus test
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Mon Sep 24 21:44:49 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Enter password:
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production
SQL> select unistr('abcåäö\2514\2524\2534') from dual;
UNISTR('A
abc??????The ?'s right above likely means that character replacement has ocurred, since character set in use by client does not define characters stored/retrieved from the database.

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

Character set migration error to UTF8 urgent

Hi
when we migrated from ar8iso889p6 to utf8 characterset we are facing one error when i try to compile one package through forms i am getting error program unit pu not found.
When i running the source code of that procedure direct from database using sqlplus its running wihtout any problem.How can i migrate this forms from ar8iso889p6 to utf8 characterset. We migrated from databas with ar8iso889p6 oracle 81.7 database to oracle 9.2. database with character set UTF8 (windows 2000) export and import done without any error
I am using oracle 11i inside the calling forms6i and reports 6i
with regards
ramya
1) this is server side program yaa when connecting with forms i am getting error .When i am running this program using direct sql its working when i running compiling i am getting this error.
3) yes i am using 11 i (11.5.10) inside its calling forms 6i and reports .Why this is giving problem using forms.Is there any setting changing in forms nls_lang
with regards

Hi Ramya
what i understand from your question is that you are trying to compile a procedure from a forms interface at client side?
if yes you should check the code in the forms that is calling the compilation package.
does it contains strings that might be affected from the character set change???
Tony G.

Character Set based on Logon Language

Hi expert,
We have an issue here after upgrade from ECC5 to ECC6.
- In ECC5 (non-unicode), if we login with language ZH (chinese), the character set automatic set to Simplified Chinese.
- In ECC6(unicode), if we login with language ZH (chinese), the character set remain be Western European.
How can we set the system to automatic set the correct character set based on user logon language?
Currently in ECC6, user have to go to application toolbar -> Customize Local Layout -> Character Set to select the correct character set.
Any advice will be very appreciate.
Thank you.

Hi,
Does someone has any idea on my issue?
Thank you.

Database character set migration rules

We have an application which migrates various entities from one database to the other. These databases could have different character sets. The migration process is automated. What character set rules should we follow while migration? Can we use the character set scanner is some automated way?
Does ORACLE publish a comprehensive list of subsets and supersets? (and I am NOT talking about strict subsets and supersets) I know that you have a whitepaper which has some rules but that is not a complete set. Any help would be much appreciated. This is an urgent requirement.

There is no simple answer as this is a complex process. You make reference to having looked at a whitepaper on this subject so I assume you know that your application will likely need to dynamically set the nls_lang setting so that proper conversion can take place on the database.
To find what character sets are subsets or supersets of what character sets?
A) The only listing available is in the 8.1.7 Document addendum shipped with the rdbms CD. This document can be found on the web at:
http://technet.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle8i/doc_index.htm
There is no real elegant way to determine possible lossy data situations programmically. Using the scanner to detect within your program whether proper conversion will take place might be possible. There is a documented v$ table that is updated when the scanner is run that could be examined
via SQL in your program to detect lossy data and truncation. You could also possibly use the PL/SQL convert function to detect lossy data. Something like if 'string' = convert('string', us7ascii, WE8MSWIN1252) then ....
Hope this helps.

Change Database Character Set to Arabic!

Dear All,
My database is Oracle 11gR2 On Linux platform.
I am trying to change the character set of my database to store Arabic characters.
This is what I am doing:
SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;
STARTUP MOUNT;
ALTER SYSTEM ENABLE RESTRICTED SESSION;
ALTER SYSTEM SET JOB_QUEUE_PROCESSES=0;
ALTER SYSTEM SET AQ_TM_PROCESSES=0;
ALTER DATABASE OPEN;
ALTER DATABASE CHARACTER SET INTERNAL_USE AR8ISO8859P6;
SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;
STARTUP;
When i check:
SQL> select value from NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS where parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET';
VALUE
AR8ISO8859P6
But still when i query data it shows it like this:
"¿¿¿¿¿¿ç ¿¿ê ¿¿¿¿çê¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿èê¿ ¿¿¿è¿ ¿¿¿¿ê¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿â¿¿ ¿¿é ¿¿¿ è¿¿¿ ¿ê ¿¿¿¿ êè¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ 28/9 ¿ê ¿ ¿¿é ¿¿¿¿ ¿è¿¿ê èç¿¿¿ ¿è¿¿¿ âê¿¿ ¿¿¿ è¿¿â¿ ¿¿è¿"
Can you help me to understand where is the problem and how to get through it.
Regards, Imran

Why on earth are you using the undocumented INTERNAL_USE command? The name alone should strongly imply that this isn't something that normal users should be playing with. It is extremely likely that you've corrupted your database.
Do you have a backup of your database taken before you corrupted it? If so, can you restore that backup? Once you do that, tell us what character set you're starting with. If you are implying that there is existing data in the database, what character set is that data encoded with? Can you DUMP the data to verify this?
Justin

How can I get English language support in South Korea?

I'm British living in South Korea. A few times now I have needed to get in touch with support but the Korean site only has Korean language. My Korean is not good enough to have a conversation in Korean. Anyone know how I can get Englsih language support in South Korea?

Is there an official site where I can install a
language pack for Armenian?
Armenian reading and writing support is already included in OS X. The font is called Mshtakan. To input you need to activate one of the Armenian keyboard layouts by going to system preferences/international/input menu and checking their boxes, plus the box for "show input menu in Finder," then selecting Armenian in the "flag" menu at the top right of the finder.
Armenian requires a modern Unicode app and will not work with Appleworks or Word X.
OS X does not yet have an Armenian system localization (menu and dialogues).
If you don't have the things described above on your system, let us know.

Non English language support

Hi,
We use measurement studio 6 in a non Unicode application, written VS2008 C++.
We have problems displaying non English characters in CWGraph.
1. Is there a way to set language or codepage for CWGraph dynamically? statically?
2. Will switching the application to Unicode can help in this issue?
3. If the above answers are false, do later versions like 7,8.x can help in this issue?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
thanks

The only information I have been able to find on this is here. It seems like you may need to change to unicode, and 8.0 or later.
Jensen
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

Add new Character Set (Arabic AR8MSWIN1256) to existing 11gR1 (Windows)

Hi all
I have an installed 11gR1 database on Windows 2008 platform with default character set of AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252.
How do I go about adding another character set (ARABIC_UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.AR8MSWIN1256) to the database so that it support storage/retrieval of arabic characters as well as English? Is this possible?
Or do I have to recreate the database with both character sets selected at creation time?
Cheers.

You cannot add a character set to an Oracle database. Your choices are (in increasing order of recommendation)
1) Use the NVARCHAR2 data type to store Arabic data. NVARCHAR2 character set is usually AL16UTF16, so you can store any language there. Cons: special handling must be programmed/configured in applications to use NVARCHAR2; some components, like Oracle Text, do not support NVARCHAR2 data type.
2) Migrate the character set of your database to AR8MSWIN1256. If your database is freshly created and empty, just drop it and create a new one. If the database is not empty but you have only pure ASCII data in the whole database, e.g. no special Windows characters, you can use csscan+csalter.plb to migrate. Search this forum and Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for instructions.
3) Migrate the character set of your database to AL32UTF8. The migration conditions are as in 2) above. AL32UTF8 is Unicode and you can store Arabic, English, French, and whatever your want. One disadvantage: Unicode is obviously a multibyte character set and Arabic requires more space in Unicode compared to AR8MSWIN1256, which is single-byte. But in AR8MSWIN1256 you cannot properly store Persian and some other languages written with Arabic script. You cannot store French, German, Russian, etc. either.
-- Sergiusz

Migrating from 8.1.7 to 9.2 with different character set

Are there going to be issues when I try to migrate from 8.1.7 to 9.2 where the character set in the 8i database was the default western european to utf8 in 9i?
I ran the 8i scan utility to see if there would be issues importing into an 8i db with a different char set and it said that there would.

Hi Jim,
As your first step, I would recommend reading the white paper Character Set Migration Best Practices for Oracle9i on the Globalization Support Home page - http://otn.oracle.com/tech/globalization/index.html
Since you mentioned that CSSCAN has already reported there are potential issues (I guess you have exceptional/Lossy data ?), I would strongly recommend splitting up the UTF8 character set change and the database version upgrade into 2 distant phrases. Probably moving to UTF8 in 8.1.7 first, then upgrading to 9.2 later.
BTW, there is a separate Globlization Support and NLS discussion forum on OTN for further discussion on character set related issues.
Nat

Customising character sets

We are trying to migrate to an oracle 8.1.7 database with UTF8 as database character set. A lot of the clients (windows) will still be using a company-specific character set, so there was an need to define/compile/install this character set in the NLS directory of oracle using .nlt files and the lxinst utility.
While was trying to do this, a some questions emerged that where not addressed in the oracle documentation for NLS and Globalisation.
The custom character set is based on the US-ASCII character set, so I thought to use
base_char_set = US7ASCII
and define the other characters starting from 0x80 and ending with 0xff
-     but when I tried to compile this charset on AIX (server side) it gave a lot of warnings:
LXI-WARN-00510: In lx22712.nlt at line 88, unicode 0x300 out of private use range
LXI-WARN-00512: In lx22712.nlt at line 88, character 0x80 is remapped
LXI-WARN-00510: In lx22712.nlt at line 89, unicode 0x302 out of private use range
LXI-WARN-00512: In lx22712.nlt at line 89, character 0x81 is remapped
-     when I tried to compile this on windows 2000 (client side) lxinst generates an application error
Because this base_char_set definition did not work (or I made a mistake), I left it out of the definition file, and I mapped the characters using:
character_data = {
0x00 - 0x7f : 0x0000 - 0x007f,
this compiles fine on both platforms. But this means that I have to fill in the classification list, the upper-to-lower and lower-to-upper relationships for all these characters, so it would be a lot easier if this base_char_set worked.
other questions:
-     About the character classification list:
can such a list contain more than 2 classifications? For example
0xC0 = {LETTER, UPPER, PRINTABLE}
what are exactly the differences between those classifications? (for example can a character be a LETTER but not PRINTABLE)
-     What about combining characters: in most character sets (also in ours) a combining character precedes the character it will be combined with, in a string. In Unicode the combining character comes after the character it will be combined with. When oracle converts strings between two such charsets, will the combining characters be handled according to the character set it is converting to, or will the order of characters in the string stay the same?
--Janick

Thanks for the help,
the reason for needing a customised character set is not because of a special input device. Our current client uses this character set (not a standard) to support scripts for different languages. Since we want future clients to use the unicode standard, and want to support more scripts in the future, we are migrating our DB to UTF8, but our old clients should still be able to connect and query the DB (for now).
I cannot find this developers version of the OLB. In
Oracle Technology Network > Software >
there is no entry in the drop down boxes for this (or am I looking in the wrong place?)
thank you a lot for the help,
regards,
--Janick

Character Set Migration - Arabic & English Language Support

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