Oracle7 Server Utilities

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NLS Considerations

This section describes the behavior of Export and Import with respect to National Language Support (NLS).

Export/Import and Single-Byte Character Sets

Some 8-bit characters can be lost (i.e. converted to 7-bit equivalents) when importing an 8-bit character set export file. This occurs if the machine on which the import occurs has a native 7-bit character set, or the NLS_LANG operating system environment variable is set to a 7-bit character set. Most often, this is seen when accented characters lose the accent mark.

To avoid this unwanted conversion, you can set the NLS_LANG operating system environment variable to be that of the export file character set.

When importing an Oracle Version 6 export file with a character set different from that of the native operating system, you must set the CHARSET import parameter to specify the character set of the export file.

Export/Import and Multi-Byte Character Sets

An export file that is produced on a system with a multi-byte character set (e.g. Chinese or Japanese) must be imported on a similar system.

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