I had that problem too. I ended up having to set to env vars to make the ? marks go away.
$ENV{NLS_LANG} = "american_america.we8iso8859p1"; $ENV{ORA_NLS} = "$ENV{ORACLE_HOME}/ocommon/nls/admin/data"; These must be set before you get a connection -----Original Message----- From: Dan King [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:33 AM To: dbi-users@perl.org Subject: Special characters I am having issues running a web application, called OTRS, that uses DBI and DBD::Oracle. When I insert special characters, such as é or â they show up as question marks in the database when looking at them from sqlplus or through the web application. I am running the web app on Apache v1 with an Oracle 10g backend. I have been able to successfully insert and read the special characters using sqlplus from the command line of the server running the web app, apache and Oracle as well as creating a small perl test script that looks as follows: #!/usr/local/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; use DBI; use DBD::Oracle; my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=localhost;sid=QAT", "rm_ticket", "rm_ticket"); my $sql = qq{ UPDATE signature SET text='çè' WHERE id=1 }; my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql); $sth->execute(); $sth->finish(); $dbh->disconnect; The reading script looks as follows: #!/usr/local/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; use DBI; use DBD::Oracle; my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=localhost;sid=QAT", "rm_ticket", "rm_ticket"); my $sql = qq{ SELECT text from signature }; my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql); $sth->execute(); my($text); $sth->bind_columns(undef, \$text); print "Text of signature:\n\n"; while( $sth->fetch() ) { print "Object: $text\n"; } $sth->finish(); $dbh->disconnect; Does anyone know why I can successfully write and read from the database when I am not using the web application but when I use the web application the special characters fail to work properly? Dan King Software Developer Canadian Resident Matching Service 613.237.0075 ext. 241 (Toll free) 877.CARMS.42 171 Nepean Street, Suite 300 Ottawa, ON, CAN K2P 0B4 www.carms.ca <http://www.carms.ca> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipients and may contain confidential and or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient or this information has been forwarded in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy copies of the original message. Ce message (incluant toute pièce jointe) s'adresse uniquement au(x) destinataire(s) prévu(s) ou à une personne autorisée à le recevoir en son (leur) nom. Il pourrait contenir des renseignements confidentiels ou protégés. Si vous l'avez reçu par erreur, nous vous prions d'en informer l'auteur dans les meilleurs délais, de ne pas divulguer son contenu et de le supprimer de votre système. Merci.