Request help for setting Globalization Parameters

Question

Hi all,
I have a test database(oracle9i) running on Redhat linux with the following Nls database settings.
PARAMETER VALUE
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET US7ASCII
NLS_CALENDAR GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY $
NLS_COMP BINARY
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP FALSE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET AL16UTF16
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION 9.2.0.4.0
I created a temporary table as
Create table Temp1(str nvarchar2(1000));
Now I inserted some japanese characters into Temp1 table through script(script saved with encoding UTF-8).
When I am trying to access the data through Crystal Reports, The data from Temp1 table is displayed as "?????".
Which parameters I need to set in the database to implement this.
Any links/suggestions will be helpful
Thanks in Advance,

Answer 1

Have you tried the UNISTR() function?
There are no parameters in Oracle9i that would allow you to insert Japanese data from SQL*Plus into NVARCHAR2 column using SQL text literals, if your database character set is US7ASCII. This is because literals are always converted first to the database character set.
You could do this only in SQL*Plus 10.2 connecting to Oracle Database 10.2 by setting environment variable ORA_NCHAR_LITERAL_REPLACE=TRUE and using NCHAR literals: n'text' or nq'#text#'. In Oracle 9.2, you have to simulate this functionality yourself by using the UNISTR function.
If you now run SELECT DUMP(<your column>,1016) FROM <your table>, you will see that the column contains only question marks ( 00, 3F ).
-- Sergiusz