Quest Software’s Unicode (UTF-8) Support Statement Toad® for Oracle and Banner 8

Quest Software’s Toad® for Oracle 9.7 works with the Banner 8 application when the Oracle 10g Unicode (UTF-8) settings are enabled. Please make note of the following caveats:

• Toad for Oracle supports any single-byte character set.
• Enabling UTF-8 does not automatically cause issues with Toad.
• The use of double-byte or multi-byte character does not automatically result in issues with Toad, provided that the Oracle database Client/Server configuration settings are in synch.

For instance, Toad for Oracle is used extensively in Korea and it works well. Issues can arise with certain combinations of the Oracle client NLS settings and Windows regional settings. However, they seem to occur only when inserting or updating data (there are some scenarios in which data retrieval can cause issues). This makes it crucial for the database, client and OS to be in synch with any internationalization settings. In addition, when using UTF-8 data in the editor or a grid, a font that supports the desired characters must be selected as the default font. Mono-space fonts (also known as fixed-width or non-proportional) will not support extended characters, and can cause data to be displayed improperly.

If you have any questions about specific Toad capabilities related to Unicode support, or if you are working with data that includes different types of objects in multi-byte languages, please refer to the Toad for Oracle 9.7 release notes: http://www.quest.com/Quest_Site_Assets/PDF/ReleaseNotes972Trial.htm.

Quest is committed to providing support for Unicode in the next release of Toad for Oracle, which will be version 10 (expected release timeframe is early October 2009). Our goal with this release is to achieve full support of multi-byte characters. Although a number of usage scenarios work correctly in Toad for Oracle 9.7, we cannot claim 100 percent Unicode support at this time due to some multi-byte character limitations.

If you run into any of the limitations Toad for Oracle has with multi-byte characters in data and database objects, you may use Toad® for Data Analysts, which fully supports Unicode. Toad for Data Analysts is a multi-platform database tool built for anyone that needs to query databases and report on the results and is available at no cost with Toad for Oracle 9.7. Product information on Toad for Data Analysts can be found here: http://www.quest.com/toad-for-data-analysts/.

Please note that this statement represent our intentions as of the date hereof, and our development plans and priorities are subject to change due to competitive factors, availability of resources and other matters common to all independent software vendors. Accordingly, these general indications of development schedules should not be relied upon if making a purchasing decision and should not be interpreted or construed as any form of a commitment that Quest will ultimately release any or all of the above-described products or features on the schedule or in the order described, or at all. The content, release, and timing of any features or functionality described above remains at the sole discretion of Quest Software, Inc.