[cx-oracle-users] Problems with UTF8 and unicode version of cx_Oracle

[Stefan D. <ste...@de...>]

Hello,

I´m using the cx_Oracle module for importing data from another database 
(ZODB), but I have problems with the character encoding.
The data in ZODB is entered through a web form, so the character 
encoding in the ZODB is UTF-8.

Everything is fine until special characters appear or characters from 
foreign languages, e.g. a dash, cyrillic characters or the German letter 
"ß". However, German umlauts (üäö) are not affected.
If I use "print" to display them, everything is fine.

But if I try to insert them into the Oracle DB, they appear as an 
inverted question mark in the Oracle SQL Developer or SQLPlus.
If I query my Oracle DB again with cx_Oracle, they appear as inverted 
questionmarks.

Example (trying to insert data with a dash):

     title = conference.getTitle().decode('utf-8')
     print title
2nd Workshop: GISAXS – an advanced scattering method
     title
u'2nd Workshop: GISAXS \u2013 an advanced scattering method'
     cursor.execute(u"INSERT INTO conf (CID, title) VALUES (4, '" 
+title+ "')")
     conn.commit()
     cursor.execute(u"SELECT * FROM conf WHERE CID = 4")
     fetch = cursor.fetchall()
     fetch[0][1]
u'2nd Workshop: GISAXS \xbf an advanced scattering method'
     print fetch[0][1]
2nd Workshop: GISAXS ¿ an advanced scattering method


If I copy&paste the output of print with the dash and insert the data 
with Oracle SQLDeveloper, everthing is correct. Even cx_Oracle returns 
the dash after a select.

I´m using cx_Oracle 5.0.3 Unicode Version with Python 2.4.3 on 
Scientific Linux 5.3. The field is NVARCHAR2 (happens also with 
VARCHAR), NLS_LANG is set to GERMAN_GERMANY.UTF8 and 
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET is UTF8.

I´m out of ideas, so I would appreciate any help and thanks in advance!

Regards,
Stefan