Oracle9i Globalization Support Guide

Lane P.

This manual is written for database administrators, system administrators, and database application developers who need to ensure that their database or applications include globalization support.To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, bask Oracle server concepts, and the operating system environment under which you are running Oracle.In addition to administrators, experienced users of Oracle and advanced database application designers will find information in this manual useful. However, database application developers should also refer to the 0raclc9i Application Developer’s Guide – Fundamentals and to the documentation for the tool or language product they are using to develop Oracle database applications.

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Table of contents :
Send Us Your Comments……Page 15
Preface……Page 17
1 Globalization Support……Page 25
Locale-Independent Operation……Page 26
Multitier Architecture……Page 28
Globalization Support Features……Page 29
Date and Time Formats……Page 30
Character Set Support……Page 31
Customization……Page 32
2 Choosing a Character Set……Page 33
What is an Encoded Character Set?……Page 34
Which Characters to Encode?……Page 35
How Many Languages Does a Character Set Support?……Page 36
How are Characters Encoded?……Page 40
Choosing an Oracle Database Character Set……Page 42
Character Set Conversion……Page 43
Restriction……Page 44
Restrictions on Character Sets Used to Express Names and Text……Page 45
Changing the Character Set After Database Creation……Page 47
Character Set Conversion……Page 48
Restricted Multilingual Support……Page 50
Unrestricted Multilingual Support……Page 51
3 Setting Up a Globalization Support Environment……Page 55
Setting NLS Parameters……Page 56
Choosing a Locale with the NLS_LANG Initialization Parameter……Page 58
Overriding Language and Territory Specifications……Page 60
NLS Views……Page 61
Language and Territory Parameters……Page 62
Date Formats……Page 68
Time Formats……Page 71
Calendar Formats……Page 75
NLS_CALENDAR……Page 77
Numeric Formats……Page 78
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS……Page 79
NLS_CURRENCY……Page 80
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY……Page 82
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY……Page 83
NLS_MONETARY_CHARACTERS……Page 84
Linguistic Sorting Parameters……Page 85
NLS_SORT……Page 86
NLS_COMP……Page 87
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP……Page 88
4 Linguistic Sorting……Page 89
Using Linguistic Sorts……Page 90
Multilingual Linguistic Sorts……Page 91
General Linguistic Sorting Information……Page 94
Using Linguistic Indexes……Page 97
Linguistic Indexes for Multiple Languages……Page 98
Requirements for Linguistic Indexes……Page 99
Customizing Linguistic Sorts……Page 100
5 Supporting Multilingual Databases with Unicode……Page 101
Unicode Encoding……Page 102
Enabling Multilingual Support with Unicode Databases……Page 104
Enabling Multilingual Support with Unicode Datatypes……Page 105
How to Choose Between a Unicode Database and a Unicode Datatype Solution……Page 107
Comparison of Unicode Solutions……Page 109
Unicode Case Studies……Page 112
Migrating Data to Unicode……Page 114
Migrating to a Unicode Database……Page 115
Migrating to Use the NCHAR Datatypes……Page 116
Specifying Column Limits……Page 117
Storing Data of Multiple Languages……Page 118
Storing Documents in LOBs……Page 119
6 Unicode Programming……Page 125
Database Access Product Stack and Unicode……Page 126
SQL and PL/SQL Programming with Unicode……Page 128
Using the UTL_FILE Package with NCHAR……Page 134
OCI Unicode Code Conversion……Page 135
Binding and Defining SQL CHAR Datatypes in OCI……Page 139
Binding and Defining SQL NCHAR Datatypes in OCI……Page 140
Binding and Defining CLOB and NCLOB Unicode Data in OCI……Page 141
Unicode Mode in OCI……Page 142
Pro*C/C++ Data Conversion in Unicode……Page 144
Using the VARCHAR Datatype……Page 145
Using the UVARCHAR Datatype……Page 146
Java String Bind and Define in Unicode……Page 147
Java Data Conversion in Unicode……Page 149
OCI Dependency in Unicode……Page 151
ODBC and OLEDB Code Conversion in Unicode……Page 152
ODBC Unicode Datatypes……Page 153
OLEDB Unicode Datatypes……Page 154
ADO Access……Page 155
7 SQL Programming……Page 157
Locale-Dependent SQL Functions……Page 158
Specifying Parameters……Page 159
CONVERT Function……Page 161
INSTR, LENGTH, and SUBSTR Functions and Character Sets……Page 162
LIKE Conditions and Character Sets……Page 164
NLSSORT Function……Page 165
Date Formats……Page 168
Numeric Formats……Page 169
The Concatenation Operator……Page 170
8 OCI Programming……Page 171
NLS Language Information Retrieval……Page 172
OCINlsGetInfo……Page 173
NLS Language Information Retrieval Sample Code……Page 177
String Manipulation in OCI……Page 178
OCIMultiByteToWideChar……Page 180
OCIMultiByteInSizeToWideChar……Page 181
OCIWideCharInSizeToMultiByte……Page 182
OCIWideCharToLower……Page 183
OCIWideCharStrcmp……Page 184
OCIWideCharStrncmp……Page 185
OCIWideCharStrcat……Page 186
OCIWideCharStrcpy……Page 187
OCIWideCharStrncat……Page 188
OCIWideCharStrrchr……Page 189
OCIWideCharStrCaseConversion……Page 190
OCIWideCharMultiByteLength……Page 191
OCIMultiByteStrncmp……Page 192
OCIMultiByteStrcat……Page 193
OCIMultiByteStrlen……Page 194
OCIMultiByteStrncpy……Page 195
OCIMultiByteStrnDisplayLength……Page 196
String Manipulation Sample Code……Page 197
Character Classification in OCI……Page 198
OCIWideCharIsAlpha……Page 199
OCIWideCharIsDigit……Page 200
OCIWideCharIsLower……Page 201
OCIWideCharIsSpace……Page 202
OCIWideCharIsXdigit……Page 203
OCIWideCharIsSingleByte……Page 204
Character Set Conversion in OCI……Page 205
OCIUnicodeToCharSet……Page 206
OCICharSetConversionIsReplacementUsed……Page 207
OCIMessageOpen……Page 209
OCIMessageGet……Page 210
OCIMessageClose……Page 211
Text Message File Format……Page 212
Message Example……Page 213
9 Java Programming……Page 215
Overview of Oracle9i Java Support……Page 216
JDBC……Page 217
Accessing SQL CHAR Datatypes Using JDBC……Page 218
Accessing SQL NCHAR Datatypes Using JDBC……Page 221
Retrieving Data to oracle.sql.CHAR Class……Page 222
NLS Restrictions……Page 224
Using Unicode characters in SQLJ programs……Page 227
Java Virtual Machine……Page 228
Java Stored Procedures……Page 230
Java Servlets and Java Server Pages……Page 232
CORBA ORB……Page 235
Enterprise Java Beans……Page 239
Configuring a Multilingual Database……Page 242
Globalizing the Java Server Objects……Page 243
Clients of Different Languages……Page 244
The Database Schema……Page 245
Java Stored Procedures……Page 246
The SQLJ Client……Page 249
10 Character Set Scanner Utility……Page 253
Data Truncation……Page 254
Character Set Conversions……Page 256
Database Character Set Migration……Page 258
Conversion of Data……Page 259
What is the Character Set Scanner Utility?……Page 261
Restrictions……Page 262
Scan Modes in the Scanner……Page 263
Using The Scanner……Page 264
Compatibility……Page 265
Getting Online Help for the Scanner……Page 266
The Parameter File……Page 267
ARRAY……Page 268
FEEDBACK……Page 269
FULL……Page 270
LOG……Page 271
PARFILE……Page 272
TABLE……Page 273
USERID……Page 274
Sample Session of Full Database Scan……Page 275
Sample Session of User Tables Scan……Page 276
Sample Session of Single Table Scan……Page 277
Scanner Reports……Page 278
Database Scan Summary Report……Page 279
Individual Exception Report……Page 285
Storage Considerations……Page 287
Performance Considerations……Page 288
Scanner Views……Page 289
Scanner Messages……Page 292
11 Oracle Locale Builder Utility……Page 299
Configuring Unicode Fonts for the Locale Builder……Page 300
The Locale Builder Interface……Page 301
Locale Builder General Screens……Page 302
Restrictions……Page 303
Setting the Language Definition with the Locale Builder……Page 306
Setting the Territory Definition with the Locale Builder……Page 309
Setting the Character Set Definition with the Locale Builder……Page 314
Character Sets with User-Defined Characters……Page 315
Oracle’s Character Set Conversion Architecture……Page 316
Character Set Definition File Conventions……Page 317
Locale Builder Character Set Scenario……Page 318
Sorting with the Locale Builder……Page 323
Changing the Sort Order for Accented Characters……Page 326
Changing the Sort Order for One Accented Character……Page 329
Generating NLB Files……Page 331
Using the New NLB Files……Page 332
12 Customizing Locale Data……Page 333
Character Set Customization Example……Page 334
Using User-Defined Character Sets and Java……Page 336
Customizing Time Zone Data……Page 338
NLS Calendar Utility……Page 339
Syntax……Page 340
Usage……Page 341
A Locale Data……Page 345
Languages……Page 346
Translated Messages……Page 348
Territories……Page 349
Character Sets……Page 350
Asian Language Character Sets……Page 352
European Language Character Sets……Page 353
Middle Eastern Language Character Sets……Page 359
Character Set Conversion Support……Page 362
Subsets and Supersets……Page 363
Linguistic Sorting……Page 366
Calendar Systems……Page 370
Obsolete Locale Data……Page 372
AL24UTFFSS Character Set Desupport……Page 374
B Unicode Character Code Assignments……Page 375
Unicode Character Code Assignments……Page 376
UTF-8 Encoding……Page 377
Index……Page 391