ESQL, Oracle CLOB and encoding

[george georgovassilis]

Good morning Dear All
This is a re-post from the users list where unluckily I didn't find a 
solution to my question.
So, appologies for cross-posting.

I've run into trouble with my ESQL page. In detail:
I'm running an Oracle database pool and a few tables in there with CLOBs 
which contain UTF-8 strings.
The following code extracts the data quite nicely:

oracle.sql.CLOB body =  (oracle.sql.CLOB)<esql:get-object column="body"/>;
String xmlbody = (body.length()&gt;0? body.getSubString(1, 
(int)body.length()):"");

which returns correctly
<snip>
ÎÎ ÎÎÏÏÎÏÎ ÎÏÎÏÎ ÏÏÎÎ ÎÎÏÎÎÎÏÎÎ 'ÎÎÎÏÎ / ÎÎÎÎÎÎ'
</snip>
The much more elegant
String stripped = <esql:get-ascii column="body"/>;
however returns garbage:
<snip>
ÂÎ ÎÂÎÎÂÎÎ ÂÎÎÎÎ ÎΠÎÂÎÂÂÎÎâ 'âÂÎΠ/ âÂÂÂÎÂ'
</snip>
Is there any way I still can use the esql?
Looking forward to your comments
George Georgovassilis