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Oracle® Database System Administration Guide
10g Release 2 (10.2) for IBM z/OS (OS/390)

Part Number B25398-01
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D National Language Support

This appendix documents the National Language Support (NLS) information specific to Oracle Database for z/OS. Information about the product-specific operation of language-specific features is provided in Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide.

The topics in this appendix include:

D.1 Overview

Oracle Database Globalization Support enables you to store, process, and retrieve data in native languages. National Language Support (NLS) is a subset of globalization support. It enables Oracle applications to interact with users in their native language, using their specific cultural conventions for displaying data.

The Oracle NLS architecture is data-driven, enabling support for specific languages and character encoding schemes to be added without requiring any changes in source code.

D.2 Supported Languages

Oracle Database for z/OS currently supports 24 languages. This table lists the languages that are supported and the default territories for each.

Language Default Territory
American America
Arabic United Arab Emirates
Bengali Bangladesh
Brazilian Portuguese Brazil
Bulgarian Bulgaria
Canadian French Canada
Catalan Catalonia
Croatian Croatia
Czech Czechoslovakia
Danish Denmark
Dutch Netherlands
Egyptian Egypt
English United Kingdom
Estonian Estonia
Finnish Finland
French France
German Germany
German DIN Germany
Greek Greece
Hebrew Israel
Hungarian Hungary
Icelandic Iceland
Indonesian Indonesia
Italian Italy
Japanese Japan
Korean Korea
Latin American Spanish America
Latvian Latvia
Lithuanian Lithuania
Malay Malaysia
Mexican Spanish Mexico
Norwegian Norway
Polish Poland
Portuguese Portugal
Romanian Romania
Russian CIS
Simplified Chinese China
Slovak Czechoslovakia
Slovenian Slovenia
Spanish Spain
Swedish Sweden
Thai Thailand
Traditional Chinese Taiwan
Turkish Turkey
Ukranian Ukraine
Vietnamese Vietnam

D.3 Overview of Character Set Support

Oracle automatically converts these types of data as they transfer between client and server, if required:

  1. CHAR, VARCHAR, and LONG database columns

  2. SQL and PL/SQL statements

  3. host variables containing character data

Both the client and the server have associated character sets. The client declares its character set before connecting to the server through the NLS_LANG environment variable. On z/OS, this parameter is in the ORA$ENV DD statement.

If NLS_LANG is not specified, the default character set is assigned.

The character set for the server is declared when a database is created in Oracle and it cannot be changed once established. The default database character set is assigned if one is not explicitly declared.

When the client character set matches the server character set, character data is sent between client and server without any conversion. If the two character sets differ, all character data is converted from one character set to the other as it is transferred. It is important to be aware that all data contained in a database, whether in user-specified tables or in Oracle-specified data dictionary tables, is stored in the database character set.

D.4 Server-Side NLS

The character set in which the data is stored in the Oracle database is specified in the CHARACTER SET clause of the CREATE DATABASE statement. Refer to the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for more information about the CREATE DATABASE statement.

When creating a database, the character set you choose depends on the language(s) to be supported and the character set(s) of the clients connecting to the server. Many languages can be supported by the default z/OS character set of WE8EBCDIC1047, but many others cannot.

If your site requires Euro support then you need to consider moving your server code page to WE8EBCDIC924. This code page is the EBCDIC version of ISO 8859-15.

The following table allows you to select an appropriate value for the CHARACTER SET clause of the CREATE DATABASE statement, based on the language to be supported and on the character set of the z/OS client. If you need to support languages that are not on this chart, please contact Oracle Support Services.

Language Client Character Set on z/OS Server Character Set on z/OS
Arabic AR8EBCDICX AR8EBCDIC420S
Baltic BLT8EBCDIC1112 BLT8EBCDIC1112S
Cyrillic CL8EBCDIC1025 CL8EBCDIC1025RFoot 1 
Eastern European EE8EBCDIC870 EE8EBCDIC870S
Greek EL8EBCDIC875 EL8EBCDIC875R1
Hebrew IW8EBCDIC424 IW8EBCDIC424S
Icelandic WE8EBCDIC871 WE8EBCDIC871S
Japanese JA16DBCS JA16DBCS
Korean KO16DBCS KO16DBCS
Simplified Chinese ZHS16DBCS ZHS16DBCS
Thai TH8TISEBCDIC TH8TISEBCDICS
Traditional Chinese ZHT16DBCS ZHT16DBCS
Turkish TR8EBCDIC1026 TR8EBCDIC1026S
Western European WE8EBCDIC924 WE8EBCDIC924
Western European WE8EBCDIC1047 WE8EBCDIC1047
Western European WE8EBCDIC1047E WE8EBCDIC1047E

Footnote 1 Server character sets CL8EBCDIC1025S (Cyrillic) and EL8EBCDIC875S (Greek) on z/OS have some errors. Oracle Corporation recommends converting from those character sets to CL8EBCDIC1025R and EL8EBCDIC875R, respectively.

D.5 Client-Side NLS

The client character set is determined by the data that is sent to the Oracle server. This is typically determined by the type of terminal that is used by the client. See your system administrator for more information about the character set used by your terminal.

D.5.1 Supported z/OS Client Character Sets

The default client character set has changed from WE8EBCDIC37C to WE8EBCDIC1047, but most existing Oracle7 for OS/390 databases are WE8EBCDIC37C. When the client and server character sets differ, the CPU overhead increases. If you set NLS_LANG so that the client and server character sets match, the CPU overhead decreases.

The following character sets are supported for z/OS clients:

Character Set Support
AR8EBCDICX XBASIC Code Page 420 Arabic
BLT8EBCDIC1112 EBCDIC Code Page 1112 Baltic/Multilingual
CL8EBCDIC1025 EBCDIC Code Page 1025 Cyrillic/Multilingual
D8EBCDIC273 EBCDIC Code Page 273 Austrian /German
DK8EBCDIC277 EBCDIC Code Page 277 Danish
EE8EBCDIC870 EBCDIC Code Page 870 East European
EL8EBCDIC875 EBCDIC Code Page 875 Greek
F8EBCDIC297 EBCDIC Code Page 297 French
I8EBCDIC280 EBCDIC Code Page 280 Italian
IW8EBCDIC424 EBCDIC Code Page 424 Hebrew
JA16DBCS EBCDIC DBCS Japanese
KO16DBCS EBCDIC DBCS Korean
S8EBCDIC278 EBCDIC Code Page 278 Swedish
TH8TISEBCDIC EBCDIC Code Page 838 Thai
TR8EBCDIC1026 EBCDIC Code Page ISO 8859 Turkish
WE8EBCDIC37 EBCDIC Code Page 37 West European
WE8EBCDIC37C EBCDIC Code Page 37 West European with extensions
WE8EBCDIC284 EBCDIC Code Page 284 Spanish (Spain)
WE8EBCDIC285 EBCDIC Code Page 285 English, UK
WE8EBCDIC500 EBCDIC Code Page 500 West European
WE8EBCDIC871 EBCDIC Code Page 871 Icelandic
WE8EBCDIC1047 EBCDIC Code Page 1047 Latin 1/Open Systems
WE8EBCDIC1140 EBCDIC code page 1140 Western European with Euro support
WE8EBCDIC1140C EBCDIC code page 1140 Western European with extensions and Euro support
ZHS16DBCS EBCDIC DBCS Simplified Chinese
ZHT16DBCS EBCDIC DBCS Traditional Chinese

D.6 NLS Calendar Utility (LXEGEN)

The LXEGEN utility is used to customize calendar data, as described in Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. Customizing calendar data is done primarily through z/OS UNIX System Services. You will need to be familiar with z/OS UNIX System Services in general, as well as the material in Oracle Database User's Guide for IBM z/OS describing the particular environment variables required by Oracle products in a z/OS UNIX System Services shell environment.

The z/OS implementation of Oracle products uses the same filenames and directory structure that the Oracle product documentation uses. Log on to z/OS UNIX System Services and verify that you can locate the applicable directories and files. If you have any difficulty locating these files, ensure that the ORACLE_HOME environment value is properly set and that z/OS UNIX System Services is properly installed before attempting to customize yor calendar data.