Oracle Unicode problem when using NLS_CHARACTERSET is WE8ISO8859P1 and NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET is AL16UTF16, and ColdFusion as programming language

Question

I have 2 Oracle 10g database, XE and Enterprise

XE

Enterprise

and this are the data type I've use in the test table

and then I tried to test to insert some Unicode char from http://www.sustainablegis.com/unicode/

and the results are

XE

Enterprise

for this test, I use ColdFusion 9 developer edition

<cfprocessingDirective pageencoding="utf-8"> 
<cfset setEncoding("form","utf-8")>

<form action="" method="post">
Unicode : <br>
<textarea name="txaUnicode" id="txaUnicode" cols="50" rows="10"></textarea>
<br><br>
Language : <br>
<input type="Text" name="txtLanguage" id="txtLanguage">
<br><br>
<input type="Submit">
</form>

<cfset dsn = "theDSN">

<cfif StructKeyExists(FORM, "FIELDNAMES")>
    <cfquery name="qryInsert" datasource="#dsn#">
        INSERT INTO UNICODE
        (
            C_VARCHAR2,
            C_CHAR,
            C_CLOB,
            C_NVARCHAR2,
            LANGUAGE
        )
        VALUES
        (
            <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="#FORM.TXAUNICODE#">,
            <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_CHAR" value="#FORM.TXAUNICODE#">,
            <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_LONGVARCHAR" value="#FORM.TXAUNICODE#">,
            <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="#FORM.TXAUNICODE#">,
            <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="#FORM.TXTLANGUAGE#">
        )
    </cfquery>
</cfif>

<cfquery name="qryUnicode" datasource="#dsn#">
    SELECT  *
    FROM    UNICODE
    ORDER BY    LANGUAGE
</cfquery>

<table border="1">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>LANGUAGE</th>
            <th>C_VARCHAR2</th>
            <th>C_CHAR</th>
            <th>C_CLOB</th>
            <th>C_NVARCHAR2</th>
        </tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
        <cfoutput query="qryUnicode">
            <tr>
                <td>#qryUnicode.LANGUAGE#</td>
                <td>#qryUnicode.C_VARCHAR2#</td>
                <td>#qryUnicode.C_CHAR#</td>
                <td>#qryUnicode.C_CLOB#</td>
                <td>#qryUnicode.C_NVARCHAR2#</td>
            </tr>
        </cfoutput>
    </tbody>
</table>

from this guide http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/docs/oracle/10g/server.101/b10749/ch6unicode.htm#i1007297 I think for my Enterprise database it should produce same thing as XE (at least for NVARCHAR2 column) since the typical solution from that guide said:

• Use NCHAR and NVARCHAR2 datatypes to store Unicode characters
• Keep WE8ISO8859P1 as the database character set
• Use AL16UTF16 as the national character set

So, how to make it works too in my Enterprise database?

Thank you :)

Answer 1

First database stores values in utf-8 encoding, second in iso-8859-1(besides N-datatypes), however you are writing out both values in utf-8 so first one is alright, but second one is wrong decoded.

Answer 2

WE8ISO88591 encoding has a limited character set and can not store all unicode characters. Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1 for list of supported characters.