Oracle GoldenGate converts between source and target character sets if they are different, so that object names and column data are compared, mapped, and manipulated properly from one database to another. See Supported Character Sets, for a list of supported character sets.

To ensure accurate character representation from one database to another, the following must be true:

• The character set of the target database must be a superset or equivalent of the character set of the source database. Equivalent means not equal, but having the same set of characters. For example, Shift-JIS and EUC-JP technically are not completely equal, but have the same characters in most cases.

• If your client applications use different character sets, the database character set must also be a superset or equivalent of the character sets of the client applications.

• In many databases, including Oracle, it is possible to force a character into a database that is not part of the Character Set. Oracle GoldenGate considers this as an invalid value, and may not map this character correctly when replicating data. For these types of situations you can use the REPLACEBADCHAR parameter as described in the Reference for Oracle GoldenGate.

In this configuration, every character is represented when converting from a client or source character set to the local database character set.

A Replicat process can support conversion from one source character set to one target character set.