It depends on the characters (languages) you have to store. If you need to support English only, AL32UTF8 is the best choice, since each char will use exactly 1 byte. For most Western European languages, AL32UTF8 as well, for example in Italian we have 1) 95% of chars are the same as English, so they take 1 byte 2) 4.99% are accented chars, they take 2 bytes 3) 0.01% is EURO currency symbol, it takes 3 bytes Do read the Globalization Support Guide, especially the chapter "Supporting Multilingual Databases with Unicode". Don't use the legacy UTF8, it has been replaced by AL32UT8. HTH Alberto On 5/4/07, genegurevich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <genegurevich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Everybody: How do I pick a unicode character set? I need to build a new database and the vendor's requirement is a unicode char set. There are several unicode character sets. How do I decide on which one to use? Are there any rules/criteria? thank you Gene Gurevich -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
-- Alberto Dell'Era "dulce bellum inexpertis" -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l