SQL Loader and foreign characters in the data file problem

Question

Hello,
I have run into an issue which I can't find an answer for. When I run SQL Loader, one of my control files is used to get file content (LOBFILE) and one of the fields in the data file has a path to that file. The control file looks like:
LOAD DATA
INFILE 'PLACE_HOLDER.dat'
INTO TABLE iceberg.rpt_document_core APPEND
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
doc_core_id "iceberg.seq_rpt_document_core.nextval",
-- created_date POSITION(1) date "yyyy-mm-dd:hh24:mi:ss",
created_date date "yyyy-mm-dd:hh24:mi:ss",
document_size,
hash,
body_format,
is_generic_doc,
is_legacy_doc,
external_filename FILLER char(275) ENCLOSED by '"',
body LOBFILE(external_filename) terminated by EOF
A sample data file looks like:
0,2012-10-22:10:09:35,21,BB51344DD2127002118E286A197ECD4A,text,N,N,"E:\tmp\misc_files\index_testers\foreign\شیمیایی.txt"
0,2012-10-22:10:09:35,17,CF85BE76B1E20704180534E19D363CF8,text,N,N,"E:\tmp\misc_files\index_testers\foreign\ลอบวางระเบิด.txt"
0,2012-10-22:10:09:35,23552,47DB382558D69F170227AA18179FD0F0,binary,N,N,"E:\tmp\misc_files\index_testers\foreign\leesburgis_á_ñ_é_í_ó_ú_¿_¡_ü_99.doc"
0,2012-10-22:10:09:35,17,83FCA0377445B60CE422DE8994900A79,binary,N,N,"E:\tmp\misc_files\index_testers\foreign\làm thế nào bạn làm ngày hôm nay"
The problem is that whan I run this, SQL Loader throws an error that it can't find the file. It appears that it can't interpret the foreign characters in a way that allows it to find that path. I have tried adding a CHARACTERSET (using AL32UTF8 or UTF8) value in the control file but that only has some success with Western languages, not the ones listed above. Also, there is no set of defined languages that could be found in the data file. It essentaially could be any language.
Does anyone know if there is a way to somehow get SQL Loader to "understand" the file system paths when a folder and/or file name could be in some other langauge?
Thanks for any thoughts - Peter

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply Harry. If I try to open the file in various text editors like Wordpad, Notepad, GVIM, andTextpad, they all display the foreign characters differently. Only Notepad comes close to displaying the characters properly. I have a C# app that will read the file and display the contents and it renders it fine. If you look at the directory of files in Windows Explorer, they all are displayed properly. So it seems things like .Net and Windows have some mechanism to understand the characters in order to render them properly. Other applications, again like Wordpad, do not know how to render them properly. It would seem that whatever SQL Loader is using to "read" the data files also is not rendering the characters properly which prevents it from finding the directory path to the file. If I add "CHARACTERSET AL32UTF8" in the control file, all is fine when dealing with Western langauges (ex, German, Spanish) but not for the Eastern languages (ex. Thai, Chinese). So .... telling SQL Loader to use a characterset seems to work, but not in all cases. The AL32UTF8 is the characterset that the Oracle database was created with. I have not had any luck if I try to set the CHARACTERSET to whatever the Thai character set is, for example. There problem there though is that even if that did work, I can't target specific lagauages because the data could come from anywhere. It's like I need some sort of global "super set" characterset to use. It seems like the CHARACTERSET is the right track to follow but I am not sure, and even if it is, is there a way to handle all languages.
Thanks - Peter