I'm currently tinkering with NCHAR & NVARCHAR2 data types in tables, as we're thinking of using Unicode within the database.

In order to insert data into an 'Nx' field from SQL*Plus (or any other tool aparrently), I have to prepend the value with an 'N' :-

insert into some_table ( this , that )
values ( 1 , N'Hello' ) ;

If I do not use 'N' I get an ORA-12704 error, but I'd like to force the application into always using 'N', as all of my columns will be NCHAR or NVARCHAR2.

I have tinkered with NLS_LANG (setting to American_America.UTF8) but to no avail.

Can anyone suggest anything else for me to try?.

Thanks in advance.