10.6. Exam Essentials

Be able to customize language-dependent behavior for the database and individual sessions.

Be aware of the different NLS parameters and the different ways that they can be set (initialization parameters, environment variables, the ALTER SESSION statement). Know the order of precedence for NLS parameter settings. Know which parameters apply only to the client or the server.

Know how to specify different linguistic sorts for queries. Understand the mechanisms for producing linguistic sorts versus binary sorts. Know how to specify both case-insensitive and accent-insensitive linguistic sorts. Know how to differentiate between multilingual and monolingual sort definitions.

Understand how to use datetime datatypes. Understand the purpose of datetime datatypes. Know the different datetimes covered in this chapter: DATE, TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, and TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE. Understand the differences between the various datetime datatypes and how they relate to globalization.

Know how to query data using case-insensitive and accent-insensitive searches. Know the syntax for specifying case-insensitive and accent-insensitive operations. Understand which SQL operations support linguistic operations. Know which NLS parameters control case-insensitive and accent-insensitive searching.

Understand how to obtain globalization support configuration information. Know the views available to see globalization information: NLS_SESSION_PARAMETERS, NLS_INSTANCE_PARAMETERS, NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS, and V$NLS_VALID_VALUES. Understand the information returned by each of these views.

Understand globalization support architecture. Know the purpose of the NLSRTL. Understand the location, purpose, and file-naming conventions of locale definition files. Know the four types of locale definition files.