Preface

This manual describes describes Oracle globalization support for the database. It explains how to set up a globalization support env ironment, choose and migrate a character set, customize locale data, do linguistic sorting, program in a global environment, and prog ram with Unicode.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

< p class="BP">Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide is intended for database administrators, system admi nistrators, and database application developers who perform the following tasks:

Set up a globalization support environment
Choose, analyze, o r migrate character sets
Sort data linguistically
Customize locale data
Write programs in a global envir onment
Use Unicode

To use this d ocument, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, basic Oracle server concepts, and the operating system environmen t under which you are running Oracle.

Organizatio n

This document contains:

Chapter 1, "Overview of Globalization Support"

This chapter contains an overview of globalization and Oracle's approach to globalization.

Chapter 2, "Choosing a C haracter Set"

This chapter describes how to choose a character set.

Chapter 3, "Setting Up a Globalization Support Environment"

This chapter contains sample scenarios for e nabling globalization capabilities.

Chapter 4, "Datetime Datatypes and Time Zone Support"

Th is chapter describes Oracle's datetime and interval datatypes, datetime SQL functions, and time zone support.

Chapter 5, "Linguistic Sorting and String Searching"

This chapter describes linguistic sorting.

Chapter 6, "Supporting Multilin gual Databases with Unicode"

This chapter describes Unicode considerations for d atabases.

Chapter 7, "Programming with Unicode"

This chapter describes how to program in a U nicode environment.

Chapter 8, "Oracle Globalization Development Kit"

This chapter describes t he Globalization Development Kit.

Chapter 9, "SQL and PL/SQL Programming in a Global Environment"

This chapter describes globalization considerations for SQL programming.

Chapter 10, "OCI Programming in a Global Environment"

This chapter describes globalization considerations for OCI programming.

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Chapter 11, "Character Set Migrati on"

This chapter describes character set conversion issues and character set mig ration.

Chapter&n bsp;12, "Character Set Scanner Utilities"

This chapter describes how to use the Character Set Scanner utility to analyze character data.

Chapter 13, "Customizing Locale"

Th is chapter explains how to use the Oracle Locale Builder utility to customize locales. It also contains information about time zone f iles and customizing calendar data.

Appendix A, "Locale Data"

This chapter describes the lang uages, territories, character sets, and other locale data supported by the Oracle server.

Appendix B, "Unicode Character Code Assignments"< /a>

This chapter lists Unicode code point values.

Glossary

The glossary contains definitions of globalization support terms.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions u sed in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly id entify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.< /p>
`UPPERCA SE monospace (fixed-width) font`	Uppercase monospace typefac e indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQ L*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames , and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER column.` `You can back up the database by using the BACKUP command. Query the TABLE_NAME column in the USER_TABLES data dictionary view. Use the DBMS_STATS.GENERATE_STATS procedure.`
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width) f ont`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, fil enames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and rol es, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmati c elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in t he `orapwd` file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the `/disk1/orac le/dbs` directory. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and location_id columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QU ERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase italic monospa ce (fixed-width) font`	Lowercase italic monospace font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the parallel_clause. Run `U``old_release``.SQL< /code> where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.`

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a m onospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT
username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following t able describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets .	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE \| DISABLE}
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets o r braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	< /a>{ENABLE \| DISABLE} [COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omit ted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of cod e not directly related to the example.	SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE; NAME ------------------------------------ /fsl/dbs/tbs_01. dbf /fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf . . . /fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf 9 rows selected.
Other notation	Y ou must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	acctbal NUMBER(11,2); acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;
Italics	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password DB_NAME = database_name
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling show n. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES; DROP TABLE hr.employees;
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicat es programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. < /p> Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter thes e elements as shown.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employe es; sqlplus hr/hr CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Conventions for Windows Operating Systems

The following table describes conventions for Windows operating systems and provides examples of their use.

c:\winnt"\"system32 is the same as 
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32

< td class="Informal">

Represents the Windows command prompt of the current hard disk drive. The es cape character in a command prompt is the caret (^). Your prompt reflects the subdirectory in which you are working. Referred to as t he command prompt in this manual.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Choose Start >	How to sta rt a program.	To start the Database Configuration Assistant, choos e Start > Programs > Oracle - HOME_NAME > Configuration and Migration Tools > Database Configurat ion Assistant.
File and directory names	File and directory names are not case s ensitive. The following special characters are not allowed: left angle bracket (<), right angle bracket (>), colon (:), double quotation marks ("), slash (/), pipe (\|), and dash (-). The special character backslash (\) is treated as an element separator, even when it appears in quotes. If the file name begins with \\, then Windows assumes it uses the Universal Naming Convention.
`C:\>`	C:\ora cle\oradata>
Special characters	The backslash (\) special character is so metimes required as an escape character for the double quotation mark (") special character at the Windows command prompt. Parenthese s and the single quotation mark (') do not require an escape character. Refer to your Windows operating system documentation for more information on escape and special characters.	C:\>exp scott/ tiger TABLES=emp QUERY=\"WHERE job='SALESMAN' and sal<1600\" C:\>imp SYSTEM/password< /em> FROMUSER=scott TABLES=(emp, dept)
HOME_NAME	Represents the Oracle home name. The home name can be up to 16 alphanumeric characters. The only special character allowed in th e home name is the underscore.	C:\> net start OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener
`ORACLE_HOME` and `ORACLE_BASE`	In releases prior to Oracle8i release 8.1.3, when you installed Oracle compon ents, all subdirectories were located under a top level `ORACLE_HOME` directory. For Windows NT, the default loca tion was `C:\orant` for Windows NT. This release complies with Optimal Flexible Ar chitecture (OFA) guidelines. All subdirectories are not under a top level `ORACLE_HOME` directory. There is a top level directory called `ORACLE_BASE` that by default is `C:\oracle`. If you install the latest Oracle release on a computer with no other Oracle software installed, then the default setting for the first Oracle home directory is `C:\oracle\ora``nn`, where `nn` is the latest release number. The Oracle home directory is located directly under `ORACLE_BASE`. All directory path examples in this guide follow OFA conventions. Refer to Oracle Database Platform Guide for Windows for additional information about OFA compliances and for information about installing Oracle products in non-OFA co mpliant directories.	Go to the `ORACLE_BASE`\`ORACLE_HOME``\rdbms\admin` directory.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled commu nity. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documen tation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to ev olve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that ou r documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web sit e at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentat ion

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples i n this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.