Did you try using iSQL*Plus? Since it's browser based, and since the browser already understands various character sets, that's the easiest way I've found to deal with multilingual data on Windows clients. =20 SQL*Plus, unfortunately, is dependent on the Windows code page, which is a region-specific encoding (i.e. Windows-1252). Windows doesn't provide a good way to handle multilingual data for this sort of thing. Justin Cave =20 Distributed Database Consulting, Inc. http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mercadante, Thomas F Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 8:19 AM To: 'jkstill@xxxxxxxxx' Cc: Oracle-L Freelists Subject: RE: NLS_CHARACTERSET client settings Jared, If there is still anything that is way to confusing it's Oracle's implementation of Character sets. Especially on Windows machines. I've tried all of the Metalink notes when trying to load Russian Characters into an AL32UTF8 database. If you use two Oracle Homes, you can update the NLS_LANG registry setting to identify which language you are speaking when you run your client software. This seemed to work for sqlldr. But the sqlplus attempts were strange at best. Part of my issue was getting a Windows box to display the correct characters back to me. I really needed an application person to create a web page to pull the data back to see if worked. But they were not "ready" to test this yet. So I am on hold with it right now. Hope this helps. Tom -----Original Message----- From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx]=20 Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 8:44 PM To: Jacques Kilchoer Cc: Oracle-L Freelists Subject: Re: NLS_CHARACTERSET client settings On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:34:43 -0800, Jacques Kilchoer <Jacques.Kilchoer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >=20 > I thought you couldn't set NLS_CHARACTERSET on the client. Do you mean > NLS_LANG? Yes, I meant NLS_LANG. >=20 > If you want to change NLS_LANG, you could create a different batch file for > each application, e.g. >=20 > set nls_lang=3DENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8ISO8859P1 > %oracle_home%\bin\sqlplus >=20 > and create a shortcut to the batch file in the Start Menu or on the desktop. >=20 > But this seems too simple so I must be missing something. Simple yes, but I would greatly prefer not adding an active element ( a batch file) to the apps. --=20 Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l