oracle tablespace character set

Question

I'm working with Oracle databases from 10g-r1 to 11g-r2. They are set as ISO-8859-15 (WE8ISO8859P15) character set.

I need to create a tablespace set as UTF-8 (AL32UTF8) character set inside these databases. Is it possible? What is the correct syntax?

Answer 1

The character set of an Oracle database is set at the database level, not tablespace level.

You have 3 options:

• Recreate the database with the correct character set
• Convert the database to AL32UTF8. Documentation link
• Change the databases National Character Set to AL32UTF8 & change your application to use NVARCHAR2()/NCHAR() datatypes instead of VARCHAR2() (documented at the same link as above)

Answer 2

That is not possible.

The character set is defined for the whole instance, you cannot change it for a tablespace.