Implementation of double-byte character support in the Database

Question

Hi experts,
There is an oracle 10.2.0.5 standard edition database running on windows platform. The application team needs to add a column of the datatype double byte (chinese characters) to an existing table. By doing so, will we have to change the character set of the database ? Would implementing this cause any impact on the database ?
Is it possible to change the existing single byte column to the double byte column in a table?
Edited by: srp on Dec 18, 2010 2:21 PM

Answer 1

I think you should post your request to Globalization Support forum Globalization Support with following details:
what is the APIs used to write data ?
what are the APIs used to read data ?
what is the client OS ?
what is the value of NLS_LANG environment variable in client environment
Note that command line SQL*Plus under Windows does not display Unicode data: try to use instead SQL Developer.
Example:
1. run in SQL*Plus:
SQL> desc t;
Name                                      Null?    Type
X                                                  NUMBER(38)
Y                                                  NVARCHAR2(10)
SQL> insert into t values(1, unistr('\8349'));
1 row created.
SQL> commit;
Commit complete.
SQL> select * from t;
         X Y
         1 ■
SQL> select dump(y, 1016)  from t;
DUMP(Y,1016)
Typ=1 Len=2 CharacterSet=AL16UTF16: 83,49Run in SQL Developer:
select * from t
X                      Y         
1                      草