While loading through External Tables, Japanese characters wrong load

Question

Hi all,
I am loading a text file through External Tables. While loading, japanese characters are loading as junk characters. In text file, the characters are showing correctly.
My spool file
SET ECHO OFF
SET VERIFY OFF
SET Heading OFF
SET LINESIZE 600
SET NEWPAGE NONE
SET PAGESIZE 100
SET feed off
set trimspool on
spool c:\SYS_LOC_LOGIC.txt
select CAR_MODEL_CD||',' || MAKER_CODE||',' || CAR_MODEL_NAME_CD||',' || TYPE_SPECIFY_NO||',' ||
     CATEGORY_CLASS_NO||',' || SPECIFICATION||',' || DOOR_NUMBER||',' || RECOGNITION_TYPE||',' ||
     TO_CHAR(SALES_START,'YYYY-MM-DD') ||',' || TO_CHAR(SALES_END,'YYYY-MM-DD') ||',' || LOGIC||',' || LOGIC_DESCRIPTION
from Table where rownum < 100;
spool off
My External table load script
CREATE TABLE SYS_LOC_LOGIC
     CAR_MODEL_CD                         NUMBER               ,
     MAKER_CODE                              NUMBER,
     CAR_MODEL_NAME_CD                    NUMBER,
     TYPE_SPECIFY_NO                         NUMBER               ,
     CATEGORY_CLASS_NO                    NUMBER               ,
     SPECIFICATION                         VARCHAR2(300),
     DOOR_NUMBER                              NUMBER,
     RECOGNITION_TYPE                    VARCHAR2(30),
     SALES_START                          DATE ,
     SALES_END                               DATE ,
     LOGIC                                   NUMBER,
     LOGIC_DESCRIPTION                    VARCHAR2(100)
ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
DEFAULT DIRECTORY XMLTEST1
ACCESS PARAMETERS
RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
MISSING FIELD VALUES ARE NULL
                    CAR_MODEL_CD,MAKER_CODE,CAR_MODEL_NAME_CD,TYPE_SPECIFY_NO,
                    CATEGORY_CLASS_NO,SPECIFICATION,DOOR_NUMBER,RECOGNITION_TYPE,
                    SALES_START date 'yyyy-mm-dd', SALES_END      date 'yyyy-mm-dd',
                    LOGIC, LOGIC_DESCRIPTION     
LOCATION ('SYS_LOC_LOGIC.txt')
--location ('products.csv')
REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;
How to solve this.
Thanks in advance,
Pal

Answer 1

Just so I'm clear, user1 connects to the database server and runs the spool to generate a flat file from the database. User2 then uses that flat file to load that data back in to the same database? If the data isn't going anywhere, I assume there is a good reason to jump through all these unload and reload hoops rather than just moving the data from one table to another...
What is the NLS_LANG set in the client's environment when the spool is generated? Note that the NLS_CHARACTERSET is a database setting, not a client setting.
What character set is the text file? Are you certain that the text file is UTF-8 encoded? And not encoded using the operating system's local code page (assuming the operating system is capable of displaying Japanese text)
There is a CHARACTERSET parameter for the external table definition, but that should default to the character set of the database.
Justin