Unicode on Oracle

[suityou01]

Just a quick one on VARCHAR2 vs NVARCHAR2.

My understanding was that on a UTF8 database international characters have to be stored in NVARCHAR2 (unicode).

I just got told that VARCHAR2 can also store international characters.

I tried this

CREATE TABLE NATIONAL_CHARACTERS
(
NON_UNICODE VARCHAR2(50),
ACTUAL_UNICODE NVARCHAR2(50)
);

INSERT INTO NATIONAL_CHARACTERS (NON_UNICODE, ACTUAL_UNICODE) VALUES ('le premier étage','le premier étage');

SELECT * FROM NATIONAL_CHARACTERS;

1 le premier étage le premier étage

wtf? é is not in the ascii character set.

Someone take me back to school.

Edit : I tried this also INSERT INTO NATIONAL_CHARACTERS (NON_UNICODE, ACTUAL_UNICODE) VALUES ('汉字/漢字','汉字/漢字');

SELECT * FROM NATIONAL_CHARACTERS;

1 le premier étage le premier étage
2 汉字/漢字 汉字/漢字

[d000hg]

Hmm. We use Oracle for text containing Swedish and we use VARCHAR2 throughout but I couldn't tell you how the DB is set up regarding UTF8.

I won't use lmgtfy but searching "nvarchar2 vs varchar2" did give this as a top entry which might help, if not I suggest you cross-post this question on SO and get an answer in about 5min

[suityou01]

Hmm. We use Oracle for text containing Swedish and we use VARCHAR2 throughout but I couldn't tell you how the DB is set up regarding UTF8.

I won't use lmgtfy but searching "nvarchar2 vs varchar2" did give this as a top entry which might help, if not I suggest you cross-post this question on SO and get an answer in about 5min

I did a search on google for this already and didn't get that link

So it seems if your database is not UTF8 you can use NVARCHAR2 to store international characters. So by that theory, if your database is UTF8 you don't need NVARCHAR2.

My brain hurts.

[NickFitz]

Try putting one of these: ☂ or these: 🚀 in there.