Howto handle german chars well under mono system.data.oracleclient?

I tried, it didn't help.
I even added the SetEnv to apache .conf, cause otherwise mod_mono is maybe not recognizing it like the OCI lib LD_LIBRARY_PATH. env parameters are not automatically available under apache mod_mono - the interface module to mono runtime.

anyway, what I am also doing is setting the database session initially before I test the statements.
alter session set NLS_TERRITORY='germany' (for example)
Testing on windows (webserver client ASP.NET) it works fine. As soon as mono is running the code it is somewhere replacing chars to "?"

The direction mentioned is not bad - cause mod_mono could maybe not know something.

@schwertner: thanks for the hints. I already had a look at the database parameters (serverside) and tried set the client the same or as german.
Setting the NLS_LANG correctly is exactly my problem. It is set - but mono (guess it must be mono) is not using what is set for the oracle client on the unix system. (even not the database session parameter is used)
I want to mention again that running the app on windows .NET works fine - doen't even matter if german or american setting for the client. (same db server)

I did a lot to set up parameters: for example a script like this as .profile (and as apache2 startup using sysconfig under SuSE; further i set these parameters in vhost.conf as PassEnv() ):
-----
ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1.0.1/client
export ORACLE_HOME
ORACLE_SID=XE
export ORACLE_SID
NLS_LANG=german_germany.AL32UTF8
export NLS_LANG
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH
export PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$PATH
export PATH
if [ $?LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]
then
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
else
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
fi
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
-----      

Even to know that this is a mono but is a solution, but I am not sure where to go to ask for that. Couldn't find it in mono's bugzilla yet.

Look here:
http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_General
http://www.go-mono.com/docs/

I had major problems wit SuSE 9 and Reporst server this summer.
Finally I gave up and have installed Reports Server on Windows 2000
because of problems with Cyrillic letters in the PDF and Word drivers.
Linux is not good for for Frontend application.

Obwohl SuSE ist sehr geliebt in Deutschland ... tut mit Leid!

@schwertner: Thanks, guess these links I checked before ;)
Now I posted a bug at novel/mono to see if they figure my issue as bug. see: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=337624

About SuSE, the fact that it is a german distribution of linux - yes, it is wicked to use it as german. Anyway I agree that it is not the best of all. But back to the issue, I think SuSE can handle the special german chars so the problem must be somewhere else. I still guess it is mono...

PS: I also prefer windows, but customers ...

Hi guys....just a comment to say you were first to post a Mono question on EE.....


I am just starting to think about using Mono so I though there should be an EE topic.

How are you finding Mono is working out?

PS I love windows too but the problem is that MS do not consider the best interest of my customers which is why we are now on this road is it not?

Hi friends,
Happy to meet you here!
MONO seems to be a rare used product, but
there is nothing wrong to open such.

The problem is a basic problem and it is tha Linux is not
frontend OS. It is mainly a server OS. So there are great troubles
with showing characters in Frontend products if the letters are
nonenglish.

Believe me! I was blamed by the German IT office in Walldorf that
i do not agree to use SLES-9 for Cyrillic reports using Oracle Forms server.
But it was simply a very hard task, something like to declare war Russia.
So I refused to obey and now my server works under Win2000 .... einwandfrei ...
the next big error will be to use VMWare - but this is other topic ...
Saying shortly -  there are suitable Os and unsuitable OS for every given task.

I thought there were plans to add unicode to Linux?

@schwertner: in my case the unix web-server is the client of the unix db-server, I don't have a unix frontend running - even if, that should work to. Becaues the frontend is a browser.
The mod_mono environment is the client of the oracle database and needs a oracle client well configured. What I guess is that I already have everything set up well - but there is still a special case with mono (mod_mono, apache2). Or an open mono bug.

@inthedark: There should be unicode. Cause as soon as I saved my win files (aspx) as unicode on the web-server (mono) they come up well in my frontend (win browser). But that was another problem I
was running into before.
+ the mono question: We as company (not just we) decided to be mono.NET/MS.NET compatible regarding C# solutions. It is not just copy the published code from VS2005 to unix/mono - but close. My opinion is you can use it - but opinions differ.

Back to my case:
It really must be the mono/oracle part that produces the problem. If you look up oracle docs the client maps "?" chars to some chars it cannot convert from one charset to another. That happens if the charset setting requested from the client is different to the on at the dbserver. As far as I got the point.

Unicode is feature of the application software.
For instance Oracle on SLES-9 uses 4 bytes Unicode
known in Oracle world as AL32UTF8.

@ ghoki
You say:
in my case the unix web-server is the client of the unix db-server. I don't have a unix frontend running - even if, that should work to. Becaues the frontend is a browser.

This is great mistake! I had the same thougts and failed in August with my Forms/Reports Server.

In fact evere server that produces output for browsers is also front-end component.
In my case the reports server has to produce PDFs and WORDS that should be displayed
via browser. It was so complex that I surrender.

The problem is how to set Umlauts on Novel.

There are some thoughts, in fact criticizm:

http://www.heise.de/ct/05/12/060/:

Windows wurde von Leuten gebaut, die in einem freundlichen, sicheren Unternehmensnetzwerk arbeiten. Unter Linux sieht man Netzwerkdaten als feindlich an. Deshalb machen sie unterschiedliche Annahmen.

http://noone.org/blog/English/Computer/SuSE/SuSE%20sucks.futile
First login
Well, I could login, the fvwm for luck seems to be a 2.5 version, so my fvwm config worked. All my xterms were there, too, xosview also and even Emacs started. Galeon didnt start of course, because it wasnt installed. mutt seemed to have UTF-8 hassles. Umlauts were blanks. And it argued about my config containing unknown variables. That should be fixable.


http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse8enterprise/pdfdoc/sles-admin-ipseries.pdf

Another problem may arise when trying to print country-specific characters,
such as umlauts. DOS and Windows use an encoding for these that is different
from Linux. Printers are mostly preconfigured for the DOS/Windows
environment. As a remedy, enter

Now i will advise to concentrate on Umlauts in SLES9 and the problems
installing National Language Support in Novell.

Search Google with keywords:  mono SLES umlauts