Cannot Store Chinese Characters In Oracle 9.2 Database

[kennymce]

Hi,

I'm having trouble localizing my Oracle 9.2 / ASP web application for our Chinese-speaking users.

My Oracle 9.2 Database has NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET set to AL16UTF16.

I've set up a test table thus:

CREATE TABLE "TBL_TEST_CH"
(
field1                     NVARCHAR2(40),
field2                     NVARCHAR2(40)
)
/
 

I have the chinese character set installed on my database / web server (same box), as well as a test client machine. I can see chinese characters in my web browser, and can enter them in a test ASP page I've set up. When I execute an insert statement via ADO, the insert statement seems to work, but the result is that the data seems to be stored as upside-down question marks.

I thought perhaps the data was being somehow scrambled between the web app and the database, so I set up an external table import the chinese data from a unicode text file:

CREATE TABLE kenny.ch_import
    (
    FIELD1        NVARCHAR2(255),
    FIELD2        NVARCHAR2(255)
    )
    ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL (TYPE oracle_loader
    DEFAULT DIRECTORY ext_dat_dir
    ACCESS PARAMETERS
    (RECORDS DELIMITED BY ":"
    FIELDS TERMINATED BY "~"
    missing field values are null)
    LOCATION (ext_dat_dir:'test_ch.txt'))
    reject limit unlimited
/
 

However, when I query the data in the external table using my web application, it comes back with garbage like "ÿþ1" and the like.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions on what I could do next to determine exactly where the problem lies. I've not been able to convince myself that the database is correctly storing the chinese character data, but I appreciate equally that the problem could lie elsewhere.

Thanks in advance,

Kenny McEwan.