The locale setting of your operating system session determines the language of the user interface and the globalization behavior for components such as Oracle Universal Installer, Oracle Net Configuration Assistant, and Oracle Database Configuration Assistant.

It also determines the globalization behavior of Oracle Database sessions created by a user application through Oracle JDBC driver, unless overridden by the application.

Open the Control Panel from the Start menu to modify the operating system locale settings. In the classic view of the Control Panel on Windows, click Regional and Language Options. In the default view of the Control Panel on Windows, click Change keyboards or other input methods.

To set locale for the current operating system user on Windows, select the desired locale from the Current format pop-up list on the Formats tab.

Some of the locales may be unavailable until you install required operating system support files.

Some Oracle components, such as SQL*Plus, require that the Windows System Locale is also set to the language in which the components are to be run. System Locale is called Language for non-Unicode programs on Windows. On Windows, click the Change system locale... button on the Administrative tab, accept the use of administrative privileges, if User Account Control is active, and select the locale from the pop-up list in the opened dialog box.

The NLS_LANG environment variable determines the language of the user interface and the globalization behavior for components such as SQL*Plus, exp, and imp.

It sets the language and territory used by the client application and the database user session. It also declares the character set for entering and displaying data by the client application.

The NLS_LANG environment variable uses the following format:

NLS_LANG=language_territory.characterset

In this format:

• language specifies the language used for displaying Oracle messages, sorting, day names, and month names

• territory specifies the conventions for default date, monetary and numeric formats

• characterset specifies the encoding used by the client application

  In most cases, this is the Oracle character set that corresponds to the Windows ANSI Code Page as determined by the System Locale.

The NLS_LANG parameter on Windows can be set

• in Registry under the subkey corresponding to a given Oracle home,

• as an environment variable.

When you install Oracle Database components and the NLS_LANG parameter is not yet set in the Registry subkey of the target Oracle home, Oracle Universal Installer sets the NLS_LANG parameter to a default value derived from the operating system locale for the current user. See the following table.

For example:

• Arabic (U.A.E.) - ARABIC_UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.AR8MSWIN1256

• Chinese (PRC) - SIMPLIFIED CHINESE_CHINA.ZHS16GBK

• Chinese (Taiwan) - TRADITIONAL CHINESE_TAIWAN.ZHT16MSWIN950

• English (United Kingdom) - ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8MSWIN1252

• English (United States) - AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252

• French (Canada) - CANADIAN FRENCH_CANADA.WE8MSWIN1252

• French (France) - FRENCH_FRANCE.WE8MSWIN1252

• German (Germany) - GERMAN_GERMANY.WE8MSWIN1252

• Hebrew - HEBREW_ISRAEL.IW8MSWIN1255

• Japanese - JAPANESE_JAPAN.JA16SJISTILDE

• Russian - RUSSIAN_RUSSIA.CL8MSWIN1251

• Spanish (Spain) - SPANISH_SPAIN.WE8MSWIN1252

• Spanish (Mexico) - MEXICAN SPANISH_MEXICO.WE8MSWIN1252

• Spanish (Venezuela) - LATIN AMERICAN SPANISH_VENEZUELA.WE8MSWIN1252

Before you can use Oracle utilities such as SQL*Plus, SQL Loader, Import, and Export from the command prompt, you may have to set the character set in the parameter NLS_LANG to a different value from the one used in the registry.

You may need to set a different character set for console mode utilities, because programs running in console mode use, with a few exceptions, a different code page (character set) from programs running in GUI mode. The default Oracle home NLS_LANG parameter in the Registry is always set to the appropriate GUI code page. If you do not set the NLS_LANG parameter for the console mode session correctly, incorrect character conversion can corrupt error messages and data.

For Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese, the console (OEM) code page is identical to the GUI (ANSI) code page. In this case, you are not required to set the NLS_LANG parameter. For other languages, set the correct character set value of NLS_LANG by issuing a SET NLS_LANG command in the same Command Prompt window in which you want to start the affected utility.

Similarly, in batch mode, set the correct character set value of NLS_LANG by inserting a SET NLS_LANG command at the start of the batch procedure, according to the character set of the files to be processed in the procedure.

To find the current console code page, issue the CHCP command in the Command Prompt window. Use the reported code page number to look up the corresponding Oracle character set name in the following table: