Preface

This book describes Oracle globalization support for Oracle Database. It explains how to set up a globalization support environment, choose and migrate a character set, customize locale data, do linguistic sorting, program in a global environment, and program with Unicode.

This preface contains these topics:

Intended Audience

Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide is intended for database administrators, system administrators, and database application developers who perform the following tasks:

To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, basic Oracle server concepts, and the operating system environment under which you are running Oracle.

Documentation Accessibility

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Related Documentation

Many of the examples in this book use the sample schemas of the seed database, which is installed by default when you install Oracle. Refer to Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information on how these schemas were created and how you can use them yourself.

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Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention Meaning Example
Bold Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both. When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis. Oracle Database Concepts

Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width) font Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles. You can specify this clause only for a NUMBER column.

You can back up the database by using the BACKUP command.

Query the TABLE_NAME column in the USER_TABLES data dictionary view.

Use the DBMS_STATS.GENERATE_STATS procedure.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width) font Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values.

Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.

 Enter sqlplus to start SQL*Plus.

The password is specified in the orapwd file.

Back up the datafiles and control files in the /disk1/oracle/dbs directory.

The department_id, department_name, and location_id columns are in the hr.departments table.

Set the QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED initialization parameter to true.

Connect as oe user.

The JRepUtil class implements these methods.
lowercase italic monospace (fixed-width) font Lowercase italic monospace font represents placeholders or variables. You can specify the parallel_clause.

Run old_release.SQL where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention Meaning Example 
[ ]
Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets. 
DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])

{ }
Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces. 
{ENABLE | DISABLE}

|
A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar. 
{ENABLE | DISABLE}
[COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]

...
Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either:

  • That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example

  • That you can repeat a portion of the code

 
CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;

SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;

 .
 .
 .
Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example. 
SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE;
NAME
------------------------------------
/fsl/dbs/tbs_01.dbf
/fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf
.
.
.
/fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf
9 rows selected.
Other notation You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown. 
acctbal NUMBER(11,2);
acct    CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;

Italics
Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values. 
CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password
DB_NAME = database_name

UPPERCASE
Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase. 
SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;
DROP TABLE hr.employees;

lowercase
Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files.

Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.

 
SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
sqlplus hr/hr
CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Conventions for Windows Operating Systems

The following table describes conventions for Windows operating systems and provides examples of their use.

Convention Meaning Example
Choose Start > How to start a program. To start the Database Configuration Assistant, choose Start > Programs > Oracle - HOME_NAME > Configuration and Migration Tools > Database Configuration Assistant.
File and directory names File and directory names are not case sensitive. The following special characters are not allowed: left angle bracket (<), right angle bracket (>), colon (:), double quotation marks ("), slash (/), pipe (|), and dash (-). The special character backslash (\) is treated as an element separator, even when it appears in quotes. If the file name begins with \\, then Windows assumes it uses the Universal Naming Convention. 
c:\winnt"\"system32 is the same as C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32
C:\> Represents the Windows command prompt of the current hard disk drive. The escape character in a command prompt is the caret (^). Your prompt reflects the subdirectory in which you are working. Referred to as the command prompt in this manual. 
C:\oracle\oradata>
Special characters The backslash (\) special character is sometimes required as an escape character for the double quotation mark (") special character at the Windows command prompt. Parentheses and the single quotation mark (') do not require an escape character. Refer to your Windows operating system documentation for more information on escape and special characters. 
C:\>exp scott/tiger TABLES=emp QUERY=\"WHERE job='SALESMAN' and sal<1600\"
C:\>imp SYSTEM/password FROMUSER=scott TABLES=(emp, dept)

HOME_NAME
Represents the Oracle home name. The home name can be up to 16 alphanumeric characters. The only special character allowed in the home name is the underscore. 
C:\> net start OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener
ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_BASE In releases prior to Oracle8i release 8.1.3, when you installed Oracle components, all subdirectories were located under a top level ORACLE_HOME directory that by default used one of the following names:

  • C:\orant for Windows NT

  • C:\orawin98 for Windows 98

This release complies with Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) guidelines. All subdirectories are not under a top level ORACLE_HOME directory. There is a top level directory called ORACLE_BASE that by default is C:\oracle. If you install the latest Oracle release on a computer with no other Oracle installed, then the default setting for the first Oracle home directory is C:\oracle\orann, where nn is the latest release number. The Oracle home directory is located directly under ORACLE_BASE.

All directory path examples in this guide follow OFA conventions.

Refer to Oracle Database Platform Guide for Microsoft Windows for additional information about OFA compliances and for information about installing Oracle products in non-OFA compliant directories.

 Go to the ORACLE_BASE\ORACLE_HOME\rdbms\admin directory.