UNICODE Character Set

[rpardip]

We have a database (Oracle 8.1.6.2) on SunSolaris now with AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1 character set.

Now, we are planning to convert it to UNICODE character set.

Is it possible to convert a AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1 database to a UNICODE character set database???

If yes, could we use the ALTER DATABASE command
to do the database conversion?

What is the commonly used UNICODE type (is it UTF8) ?

If I change it to any of the UNICODE types, then what other changes do I have to make.....any increase in the field lengths, etc...

Thanks in advance!

[rotem_fo]

Hi,
you can export the database from the 8.1.6 machine into any machine with any charcter set.
I personally took an export file from Oracle 7.3.4 with charset WE8ISO8859P1 and imported the file into a machine with Oracle 8.0.5 charset IW8ISO8859P8.

You have to remmeber to change the charcter set in the export file according to Oracle's charset table.

Edit the export file in hex editor. The second and the third byte in the file define the character set used for
the export.

Change them according to the table:

Name ID
----------------------
US7ASCII 0x0001
WE8DEC 0x0002
WE8ISO8859P1 0x001f
EE8ISO8859P2 0x0020
SE8ISO8859P3 0x0021
NE8ISO8850P4 0x0022
CL8ISO8859P5 0x0023
AR8ISO8859P6 0x0024
EL8ISO8859P7 0x0025
IW8ISO8859P8 0x0026
WE8ISO8859P9 0x0027
TH8TISASCII 0x0029
WE8ROMAN8 0x0005
WE8PC850 0x000a
US8PC437 0x0004
EE8PC852 0x0096
EE8MSWIN1250 0x00aa
CL8MSWIN1251 0x00ab
EL8MSWIN1253 0x00ae
WE8MSWIN1252 0x00b2
JA16EUC 0x033e
JA16SJIS 0x0340
ZHT16BIG5 0x0361

example:

in order to change a file from US7ASCII to IW8ISO8859P8
i changed the second and third byte of the file from 00 1F
to 00 26.