unicode + oracle query....... (suggestions needed...)

[Sandeep Krishna]

hi....   actually i have been trying to use ASPs (UTF-8 encoding..) to write unicode cahracters to an Oracle DB table (varchar2 field)... and then retrieve them back.. (i used UTF-8 encoding for both writing to the database and also for retriving and displaying..)   there were some amazing observations...   * each  unicode character was taking 7 bytes in the database. (instead of expected 2 or 3...) * some unicode characters(or rather code points.) like' F95F' when encoded in UTF-8 was being encoded as EF A5 BF, when it should have been encoded as EF A5 9F..  in fact many unicode charcters whose encoded form had to had a byte in the range (80..9F) were being somehow changed to BF ... thus resulting in incorrect retrieval....   I was unable to find the reasons for these strange occurrences.... Pls suggest what could be the causes for these......   regards,   Sandeep.     ***********************************************************************************************         SANDEEP KRISHNA Member Technical Staff (Priceline.com) H.C.L. Technologies Limited A-1 C&D, Sector -16, NOIDA, UP, India. Ph:  91-11-91-4516321 (extn. 1062) Fax: 91-11-91-4510713, 4510226 E-Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]