How to insert unicode charater from SQLPLUS

Question

Hi all,
My problem is following :
I want to store unicode character in a column of table so I create table with command : CREATE TABLE PERSON( ID NUMBER(4) NOT NULL ,NAME NVARCHAR2(64) NOT NULL).
NLS_CHARACTERSET is set in DB :
SQL> SELECT * FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS;
PARAMETER VALUE
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8ISO8859P1
NLS_CALENDAR GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM
PARAMETER VALUE
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZH:TZM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZH:TZM
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY $
NLS_COMP BINARY
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET UTF8
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION 8.1.7.0.0
18 rows selected.
when I insert data into above table (PERSON) with none unicode character is OK, but I failed with unicode character.
Can anyone help me to solve this proplem?
Thank you so much for any hints
Pls email me at : [email protected]

Answer 1

NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8ISO8859P1 is a western eurpoean character set (without the Euro symbol and about !# other funky characters being supported - use NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8ISO8859P1% if you want the Euro symbol, sorry just a sidenote). Anyways, this will need to be changed to UTF* before it can store Unicode characters. There are various ways to do this, but the best option is probably to export the entire database, create scripts to recreate all tablespaces and datafiles, drop the database, recreate the database in UTF8, then import the export file. There's a lot of little 'gotchas' involved so be prepared for it not to work the first time. But if it doesn't work, you can always create the database again with NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8ISO8859P1 and reimport so everything is back to how it was.