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:

Overview
Supported Languages
Overview of Character Set Support
Server-Side NLS
Client-Side NLS
NLS Calendar Utility (LXEGEN)

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:

CHAR, VARCHAR, and LONG database columns
SQL and PL/SQL statements
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	CL8EBCDIC1025R^Foot 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 1Server 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.