Java 10g OCI connection

Question

I am not able to connect to oracle 10g from java(j2sdk1.4.2_04) using OCI. I have the basic instantclient10_1 downloaded and I have made my classpath and path point to the instantclient directory. Os used is win2k.
I think I am able to load the driver because
Class.forName ("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"); given inside try doesn't get caught.
when I use
DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:oracle:oci8:scott/tiger@"); I get runtime error(no compile error)
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: t2cGetCharSet
at oracle.jdbc.driver.T2CConnection.t2cGetCharSet(Native Method)
at oracle.jdbc.driver.T2CConnection.getCharSetIds(T2CConnection.java:290
7) and some more lines.
The same error I get if I use oci instead of oci8 and if I add orcl after @.
I then tried
java -classpath %cp% -Djava.library.path=C:\instantclient MyJavaApp
which gives
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
But I am able to connect using thin client. Please help in setting my oci connection right.

Answer 1

I just realized after the last post, that not everyone is amiliar with the latin character set.
I'm refering to ISO 8859-1 Or WE8ISO8859P1
The default on my pc is
[AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252] which may or may not be what I need.
But some how for me the following always does the trick nicely.
AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1
The reall killer in going from UTF to another format or vice versa. The 10g OCI client puts to much faith in Microsoft and defaults you to whatever is in windows.
-- Checking your NLS:
From windows, to check the NLS_LANG, you need to open a command prompt and to run sqlplus in command line mode.
First, check if it's set in the environment:
SQL> host echo %NLS_LANG%
If this reports just %NLS_LANG% back, the variable is not set in the
environment. If it's set it reports something like
ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8PC850
If NLS_LANG is not set in the enviroment, you should check the value
in the registry:
SQL> @.[%NLS_LANG%].
If you get something like:
unable to open file ".[ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8ISO8859P1]."
the "file name" between the '[]' is the value of the registry parameter.
(This is NOT an error but just a "trick" to get the NLS_LANG value)
If you get this as result:
unable to open file ".[%NLS_LANG%]."
then the parameter NLS_LANG is also not set in the registry.
Note: the @.[%NLS_LANG%]. "trick" reports the NLS_LANG known by the sqlplus
executable, it will not read the registry itself.
But then you are not sure if the variable is set in the enviroment or in the
registry. That's the reason of checking with the host commando first.