I thought you couldn't set NLS_CHARACTERSET on the client. Do you mean NLS_LANG? If you want to change NLS_LANG, you could create a different batch file for each application, e.g. set nls_lang=ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8ISO8859P1 %oracle_home%\bin\sqlplus and create a shortcut to the batch file in the Start Menu or on the desktop. But this seems too simple so I must be missing something. -----Original Message----- Jared Still Looking for pointers on dealing with NLS_CHARACTERSET on Windows clients. We have 2 apps here that require different settings for the client. One of them requires UTF8, the other simply will not work properly when NLS_CHARACTERSET is set to UTF8. One possible solution is to install 2 copies of the Oracle client so that there are 2 oracle homes. Haven't tried it yet, but it may not work well, dependent on how the client locates Oracle. If via PATH, then installing 2 clients is a no go, and this only really viable for a limited number of clients (admins). Not really a good solution to push out to the help desk. The client is 9i, the databases are 9i and 8i. 9i: NLS_CHARACTERSET = WE8ISO8859P1 8i: NLS_CHARACTERSET = UTF8 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l