NLS_Charset

Description

Specifies the client-side character set for the current environment handle.

Applies to

O90 Oracle9i

O10 Oracle 10g

ORA Oracle (for 11g and later)

Syntax

NLS_Charset='value'

Parameter

Description

value

Specifies the client-side character set for the current environment handle. Values are:

  • Unicode

    (Default) The OCI client uses the UTF-16 character set.

  • Local

    The OCI client uses the current character set defined by the NLS_LANG parameter on the local computer.

  • ValidCharsetName

    Any valid character set name except AL16UTF16. To specify a value in the Database Profile Setup dialog box, type the name of the character set into the NLS Charset drop-down list box on the System page.


Default value

NLS_Charset='Unicode'

Usage

When you specify a value for NLS_Charset, PowerBuilder sets the OCI NLS_CHARACTERSET property in the current connection. NLS_CHARACTERSET is a database parameter that specifies the character set encoding used to store CHAR, VARCHAR2, LONG, and CLOB datatypes. The value you set corresponds to the character set defined by the NLS_LANG client-side parameter. NLS_LANG defines the character set encoding of text that OCI gets from or sends to applications in bind or define variables or as SQL statements to be executed by the server.

For the national character set NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET, the Oracle database interfaces always use the UTF-16 character set. If you are using pooling with the ORA driver, and two Oracle connections are connected to the same Oracle server but use different character sets, the connections must reside in different connection or session pools. All pooling-related DBParm parameters must be set before the initial database connection.

For COM+ connections, you can use only Local.

Examples

To specify that the OCI client should use the current character set defined by the NLS_LANG parameter on the local computer to store string datatypes:

  • Database profile

    Select Local from the NLS Charset drop-down list on the System page in the Database Profile Setup dialog box.

  • Application

    Type the following in code:

    SQLCA.DBParm="NLS_Charset='Local'"

See also

StrByCharset