Special Characters Should Not Be Displayed in the Application (Doc ID 2878304.1)

Last updated on AUGUST 01, 2024

Applies to:

Symptoms

As a part of a database upgrade from Oracle 11g (11.2.0.4) to Oracle19c (19.13), the database character set has moved from Oracle11g (US7ASCII) to Oracle 19c (AL32UTF8). This a standard 3-tier architecture with a browser based application (UI), the middle tier is WebLogic Server (11g), and the backend is Oracle DB. WebLogic is using the Oracle 11g (11.2.0.4) thin JDBC drivers to connect to the old database (Oracle 11g) and the new database (Oracle19c). There are no changes to the application, the middle tier (WebLogic), or the Thin JDBC drivers as a part of this database upgrade. The source Oracle11g database has special characters in the database that are not recognized by US7ASCII. All the data (including special characters) and the metadata were exported (Data Pump export) from Oracle 11g (US7ASCII) and successfully imported into Oracle19c (AL32UTF8). In order to allow for a successful import to Oracle19c on a multi-byte database character set (AL32UTF8), we had to change all the CHAR and VARCHAR2 columns from "byte" to "char" on the destination database (Oracle19c).

In the old configuration, when the application (UI) was connected to the Oracle11g database (through WebLogic as middle tier), for all the database tables that have special characters, these special characters are not being displayed in the app, and this is the business requirement. However, in the new configuration, when the application (UI) is connected to the Oracle19c database (through the same WebLogic as middle tier), for all the tables that have special characters, these special characters are now being displayed in the app which causes problems for the app users. Setting the NLS_LANG to AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 on WebLogic when connected to Oracle19c didn't make any difference.

Changes

Cause

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