G Configuring Oracle Database Globalization Support

This appendix describes these Globalization Support topics:

G.1 About NLS_LANG Logical

Oracle provides Globalization Support that enables users to interact with a database in their preferred locale and character set settings. Setting the NLS_LANG logical name specifies locale behavior for Oracle software. It sets the language and territory used by the client application. It also sets the character set for entering and displaying data by a client program, such as SQL*Plus.

The NLS_LANG logical uses the following format:

$ DEFINE NLS_LANG="language_territory.characterset"

where:

Parameter	Description
`language`	Specifies the language used for displaying Oracle messages, sorting, day names, and month names.
`territory`	Specifies the conventions for default date, monetary and numeric formats.
`characterset`	Specifies the encoding used by the client application (normally the Oracle character set that corresponds to the character set of the user terminal or the operating system)

The choices of locales available on your system depend on the locales installed. For more information on HP OpenVMS locale refer to the Compaq C Run-Time Library Utilities Reference Manual.

The setting of NLS_LANG depends on the locale available in your session. Great care must be taken to set NLS_LANG correctly. An Incorrect NLS_LANG setting may lead to the input of incorrect data.

See Also:

Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for information about the NLS_LANG parameter and Globalization Support initialization parameters

The following table lists some of the valid values for the NLS_LANG environment variable.

Note:

Refer to the operating system specific documentation on how to determine the operating system locale environment setting.

Operating system locale	`NLS_LANG` values
French (France)	FRENCH_FRANCE.WE8ISO8859P15, FRENCH_FRANCE.WE8ISO8859P1, FRENCH_FRANCE.WE8MSWIN1252, FRENCH_FRANCE.AL32UTF8
Japanese (Japan)	JAPANESE_JAPAN.JA16EUC, JAPANESE_JAPAN.JA16SJIS, JAPANESE_JAPAN.AL32UTF8