character encoding problem

[KoenVermeer]

How do I change te character encoding in sde?
For our project the data should comply to Latin-1, but all characters outside of ascii aren't displayed in ArcGIS.

-When I'm adding data through ArcMap, characters like 'ë' aren't saved correctly in the database.
-When I update data directly through Oracle the characters are saved correctly in the database, but are displayed wrong in ArcGIS (as '?')

Any idea what the problem is and how I can fix it?

My setup:
Oracle9i
ArcSDE 9.0
ArcGIS Desktop 9.2

[VinceAngelo]

ArcSDE doesn't have character encoding -- only the databases do.  Oracle's encoding
rule is defined by the NLS_LANG envronment variable.  If you don't specify one in the
environment or dbinit.sde, the application server will use the default of US7ASCII.

You're using an archaic software stack -- It's been years since ArcSDE 9.0 or Oracle 9i
was last supported, and even ArcGIS 9.2 is in Retired support status.  You probably
want to search postings over in forums.esri.com for NLS_LANG issues.

- V

[KoenVermeer]

Thanks for your reply

One correction to my previous post, we're using ArcGIS 9.3.1, not 9.2
But we do use ArcSDE 9.0, I know this is ancient, but our client isn't ready to upgrade. Could that be a cause for the problem?

The NLS_CHARACTERSET of oracle is WE8MSWIN1252. That should contain those characters right?

[KoenVermeer]

Found the solution:

If you are using a pre-9.2 server or client and must set the NLS_LANG variable, for Windows, you must register the NLS_LANG variable before the ArcSDE server is started.

sdeservice -o register -r NLS_LANG -v <value> -p <DB_Admin_password> [-i <service>]

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm?TopicName=Language_support_in_the_geodatabase&an...