Geting UTF-8 character issue in Oracle and Java

Question

Have one table in Oracle which contains column type is NVARCHAR2 . In this column I am trying to save Russian characters. But it showing ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ like this. When I try to fetch same characters from Java, I am getting same string.

I have try with NCHAR VARCHAR2 . But in all cases same issue.

Is this problem from Java or Oracle? I have try same Java code, same characters using PostgreSQL which is working fine. I am not getting whether this problem is from Oracle or Java?

In my oracle database NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET property value is AL16UTF16 . Any Idea how can I show UTF-8 characters as it is in Java which saved in Oracle.

Answer 1

Problem with characters is that you cannot trust your eyes. Maybe the database stores the correct character values but your viewing tool does not understand them. Or maybe the characters get converted somewhere along the way due to language settings.

To find out what character values are stored in your table use the dump function:

Example:

select dump(mycolumn),mycolumn from mytable;

This will give you the byte values of your data and you can check whether or not the values in your table are as they should be.

Answer 2

After doing some google I have resolved my issue. Here is ans: AL32UTF8 is the Oracle Database character set that is appropriate for XMLType data. It is equivalent to the IANA registered standard UTF-8 encoding, which supports all valid XML characters. AL32UTF8 is the Oracle Database character set that is appropriate for XMLType data. It is equivalent to the IANA registered standard UTF-8 encoding, which supports all valid XML characters.

It means while creating database in Oracle, set AL32UTF8 character set.

Here is link for this

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14231/create.htm#i1008322

Answer 3

You need to specify useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8 while getting the connection from the database. Also make sure the column supports UTF-8 encoding. Go through Oracle documentation .