I'm assuming that you're looking at using UTF-8 for the database character set here and storing all the text in CHAR or VARCHAR2 columns. I don't foresee any problems in that sort of configuration, so long as your client NLS_LANG settings correctly identify the encoding of the incoming data. If you are contemplating storing data in NCHAR or NVARCHAR2 columns with a UTF-16 encoding, you would need to account for the additional storage requirements (English characters take two bytes rather than 1 byte as in UTF-8). On the other hand, string operations on fixed-width data are faster than string operations on variable-width data, so the extra storage space requirements are a tradeoff. Justin Cave Distributed Database Consulting, Inc. http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of William R. Jones Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 9:29 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Reading English text in multi-byte character set DB - Any Issues? We are in the process of creating a new data warehouse to replace (and expand on) an older one. The database will be an Oracle 9i RAC with Data Guard (logical standby) setup. There are near-term future plans for adding text, address information from other languages (i.e., Portuguese, Spanish, French and possibly Japanese and Chinese addresses). If we go to a multi-byte setup (e.g., double-byte), will we encounter any problems with storing and reading English text? Also, are there any other issues that anyone has encountered using a multi-byte character set on an Oracle database that is primarily (98+ %) storing English text? Regards, William ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------