Database Software

Hello,

How do I handle the Japanase characters with Oracle database?

I have a Java application which retrieves some values from the database; makes some changes to these [ex: change value of status column, add comments to Varchar2 column, etc] and then performs an UPDATE back to the database.

Everything works fine for the English. But NOT for Japanese language, which uses Multi-byte/Unicode characters. The Japanese characters are garbled after the performing the database UPDATE.

I verified that Java by default uses UTF16 encoding. So there shouldn't be any problem with Java/JDBC.

What do I need to change at #1- Oracle (Database) side or #2- at the OS (Linux) side?

/* I tried changing the NLS_LANG value from OS and NLS_SESSION_PARAMETERS settings in Database and tried 'test' insert from SQL*plus. But SQL*Plus converts all Japanese characters to a question mark (?). So could not test it via SQL*plus on my XP (English) edition.
*/

Any help will be really appreciated.

Thanks