Tuesday, June 19, 2012

To install Oracle in english on non-english OS

I installed oracle on non-english OS(windows server 2008 R2) which was not feasible for me.
I got server in Germany and installed Oracle 11g. When i installed blindly then i noticed, Oracle was communicating in German language which i can't understand. After some research & discussion with my DBA friends, i found three ways to make oracle install in english on non-english machine. You can opt anyone of them as per your requirement.


#Modify the oraparam.ini file.
In all the unzipped oracle installation files directory, there is a folder called install which has the file oraparam.ini.  It is this file which tells the setup.exe how to behave.  There is this parameter  ” NLS_ENABLED “, has a default value TRUE, which tells the setup.exe to take the OS language when invoked. So, if the OS is German, the setup.exe would show the details in German.  Make it FALSE and setup.exe will not take the OS language, it will go for the default english.

NLS_ENABLED=TRUE  #setup.exe will take the OS language for granted

NLS_ENABLED=FALSE #setup.exe will go for the default english




#Change the non-english OS language to English.
There is an alternate option that we can change OS language to English and oracle will automatically use english language. Steps to change the language:
Go to control panel --> Regional and language --> you will got four tab under this option
a) Formats --> select English where ever you find any option.
b) Location --> You can select your country but i choose US.
c) Keyboard & Language --> Change Keyboard --> general --> select US under Default Language and click on US under Installed Services.
d) Administrative --> change system locale.. --> select English
Reboot your system to take language into English.

Now install oracle, it will automatically pick English language as default.



#Change the NLS_LANG.
After installing Oracle in non-english language use NLS_LANG.

NLS_LANG is an environment variable used to define language, territory and character set properties. You can use as follow.

Windows (in cmd window):
set NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1

Unix/ Linux:
export NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1


Here are some valid NLS_LANG settings:
->   French_France.WE8ISO8895P1
->   French_Switzerland.WE8ISO8895P1
->   Norwegian_Norway.NDK7DEC
->   Norwegian_Norway.WE8ISO8895P1
->   Japanese_Japan.JA16SJIS
->   Arabic_Egypt.AR8MSWIN1256
->   American_America.AR8MSWIN1256
->   American_America.WE8ISO8859P1
->   Latvian_Latvia.BLT8CP921

Note: Third option(Change the NLS_LANG.) is not permanent setting. It will work until command prompt is not closed. Rest both options are permanent.



Your suggestions and queries are always warm welcomed.