Hi Why does hu.dwim.rdbms.oralce not support utf-8 when it comes to connection encodings? ( database encodings supported are utf-8 and us-ascii ) Could that be related to my problem? Doesn't make sense except maybe this was written for cmucl? (a wild guess?) I can't test this easily because I don't have a 32bit unix installed. Maybe that's important: I entered the data (symtag_key varchar2, nvarchar2 datatype) into the tables with sqlplus. But I got the same results (empty spaces/boxes in strings with sbcl started from the shell doing [select "SYMTAG_KEY" from symtag]) entering the data with hu.dwim.rdbms's insert-record function if I did not miss something. Do you know of a hu.dwim.rdbms.oracle + oracle setup that actually works? If so what operating system and oracle product is part of this setup? Sqlplus has no problems showing me the data in both cases: 1. entering the data with sqlplus 2. entering the data with using hu.dwim.rdbms's insert-record SQL> select "SYMTAG_KEY" from symtag2; SYMTAG_KEY ---------------------- foo foobar SQL> select "SYMTAG_KEY" from symtag; SYMTAG_KEY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- foo foobar foo11 If we can't solve this soon I will have to go with ascii or dig into the source code myself. Have you any hints for the latter? Regards, chris *** 0. no utf-8 connection encoding ** hu.dwim.rdbms/source/oralce/backend.lisp .. (starts line 97)     (rdbms.debug "Connecting in transaction ~A" transaction)     (oci-call (oci:env-create (environment-handle-pointer transaction)                               (logior                                (ecase (connection-encoding-of (database-of *transaction*))                                  (:ascii 0)                                  (:utf-16 oci:+utf-16+))                                *default-oci-flags*)                               null null null null 0 null)) .. ** hu.dwim.rdbms/source/oracle/database.lisp .. (starts at line 9) (def (class* e) oracle (database)   ((connection-encoding     :utf-16     :type (member :ascii :utf-16)))) .. *** 1. All my settings are set to utf-8 except for the network encoding of hu.dwim.rdbms chris@catch22:~$ locale LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_ALL= * sb-impl::*default-external-format* :UTF-8 * (get-encodings) 21:54 0           RDBMS DEBUG   About to BEGIN transaction in database #<ORACLE {1004C49001}> 21:54 0           RDBMS DEBUG   About to COMMIT transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #f {10039EB251}> (("connection-encoding" . :UTF-16) ("database-encoding" . :UTF-8)) * *** 2. Fooling around with the NLS_LANG environment variable and sqlplus AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 doesn't work with sqlplus but AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 does chris@catch22:~$ sqlplus-connect.sh Error 19 initializing SQL*Plus Invalid NLS character set for this OS environment chris@catch22:~$ $NLS_LANG bash: AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL16UTF16: Kommando nicht gefunden. chris@catch22:~$ export NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 chris@catch22:~$ sqlplus-connect.sh SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Tue Nov 2 20:24:10 2010 Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved. Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production SQL> *** 3. Oracle Environment Variables - bashrc snippet export ORACLE_HOME=~/usr/instantclient_10_2 export XE=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server export ORACLE_SID=XE export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/lib:/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:~/usr/instantclient_10_2:$XE/lib export PATH=~/bin:~/usr/instantclient_10_2:$XE/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games  export ORACLE_USERID='chris/woirgend' export ORACLE_DSN='dbi:Oracle:XE' export TNS_ADMIN=~/usr/instantclient_10_2/network/admin export NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8 *** 4. SBCL console - What kind of characters are we dealing with? * (select-symtag2) 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   About to BEGIN transaction in database #<ORACLE {1004C49001}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Executing "SELECT SYMTAG_KEY FROM symtag" STYLE-WARNING: Undefined alien: "OCIGetInstantClientPackageName" STYLE-WARNING: Undefined alien: "OCIGetInstantClientPackageName" 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Connecting in transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Logging on in transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Preparing command: "SELECT SYMTAG_KEY FROM symtag" 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetching "??????????" from buffer at index 0 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetched: "???" 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetching "??????????" from buffer at index 0 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetched: "??????" 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetching "??????????" from buffer at index 0 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Fetched: "?????" 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   About to COMMIT transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Cleaning up Oracle transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> to database #<ORACLE {1004C49001}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Calling logoff in transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> 20:58 0           RDBMS DEBUG   Freeing environment handle of transaction #<#<STANDARD-CLASS NIL {1004C970B1}> :begin-executed-p #t {100370D6A1}> #<(AND (VECTOR T 8) (NOT SIMPLE-ARRAY)) {100395D23F}> * (length *) 3 * (setq a **) ;     (SETQ SYMARENA-ORACLE::A **) ; ; caught WARNING: ;   undefined variable: A ; ; compilation unit finished ;   Undefined variable: ;     A ;   caught 1 WARNING condition #<(AND (VECTOR T 8) (NOT SIMPLE-ARRAY)) {100395D23F}> * (elt (elt a 0) 0) "???" * (setq b *) ;     (SETQ SYMARENA-ORACLE::B *) ; ; caught WARNING: ;   undefined variable: B ; ; compilation unit finished ;   Undefined variable: ;     B ;   caught 1 WARNING condition "???" * b "???" * (elt b 0) #\U6600 * #\U6600 #\U6600 * (elt b 1) #\U6F00 * ** 3.1. emacs - scratch buffer - elisp ?U6FFO - doesn't work in the emacs scratch buffer so I copied the char from sbcl to the emacs scratch buffer after expressing it like this in sbcl #\U6FF0 and got the following: (char-charset ??) chinese-big5-2   !DSPAM:4cd084f748589401417091!