Overview of Globalization Support

Oracle Database Express Edition globalization support enables you to store, process, and retrieve data in native languages. It ensures that database utilities, error messages, and sort order, plus date, time, monetary, numeric, and calendar conventions, automatically adapt to any native language and locale.

Oracle Database XE globalization support includes National Language Support (NLS) features. National Language Support is the ability to choose a national language and store data in a specific character set. Globalization support enables you to develop multilingual applications and software products that can be accessed and run from anywhere in the world simultaneously. An application can render content of the user interface and process data in the native language and locale preferences of the user.

This section contains the following topics:

Note:

There are two distributions of Oracle Database Express Edition: one for Western Europe and the other for all languages.

The Western European version includes a database created using a single-byte LATIN1 (WE8MSWIN1252) character set. The database can store Western European language text, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, as well as English. Database error messages are available in Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The Oracle Database XE browser-based user interface is available in English only.
The Universal version includes a multi-byte Unicode (AL32UTF8) database. The database is suitable for data of all languages, including Greek, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and all the Western European languages listed in the previous package. Both the database error messages and Oracle Database XE browser-based user interface are available in Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

The smaller, Western European version is suitable for Western European language deployment, in environments where working with an English-only development interface is acceptable. The Universal package offers support for development and deployment in all languages, and it should be used when a Unicode database is desired.