Oracle Character Set Compatibility

DataLoad stores data in the character set used on your PC. If your PC supports Unicode then DataLoad processes data in the format specified for non-Unicode programs. This is controlled from the PC's Regional and Language Options dialog box. Although the character set used in your Oracle Applications database may be different to the Windows character set they will almost certainly be compatible; that is, both character sets will represent your local characters in the same manner.

However, if your database stores characters using Unicode UTF-8 then some characters will be stored differently compared to your local character set. For example, if you work in Western Europe then your PC may well use the Windows 1252 character set. The Euro character (€) is represented differently in 1252 compared to UTF-8. Similarly, many European language characters such as ä, å, æ and ü are also stored differently in UTF-8 compared to 1252.

This means if your Applications database uses UTF-8 then DataLoad must process the forms playback files in UTF-8 rather than your local Windows character set. To ensure that happens you must ensure the "Unicode (UTF8) File Format" check box is ticked. That setting can be found on the Format tab of the Options dialog box, which is located on the Tools menu. Whereas most options only refer to the current file this setting remains as set for all files until you change it again . Therefore, once ticked all files will be treated as UTF-8 files until this option is de-selected.

How to determine your database's character set. You could ask your Applications DBA, he or she will definitely know this. However, you can also identify the character set from within Applications. Select "About Oracle Applications..." from the "Help" menu; scroll down to a section called "Forms Server Environment Variables" then continue to scroll down until you find a line which starts with "NLS_LANG". The value on the remainder of the line will be of a similar format to the following:

American_America.WE8ISO8859P1

That is, Language_Terriroty.CharacterSet. The final part of this value, after the '.', is the character set; if that indicates your system uses UTF8 then you must turn on UTF8 compatibility in DataLoad.