HI friends,

From the standard JDBC perspective, there is no difference between ASCII/8859-1 characters and those above 255 ( hex FF ). The reason for that is that all Java characters are in Unicode ( unless you perform/request special encoding ). Implicit in that statement is the presumption that the data store can handle characters outside the hex FF range or interprets different character sets appropriately. That means either:

• The OS, application and database use the same code page and character set. For example, a Greek version of NT with the DBMS set to the default OS encoding.
• The DBMS has I18N support for Greek ( or other language ), regardless of OS encoding. This has been the most common for production quality databases, although support varies. Particular DBMSes may allow setting the encoding/code page/CCSID at the database, table or even column level. There is no particular standard for provided support or methods of setting the encoding. You have to check the DBMS documentation and set up the table properly.
• The DBMS has I18N support in the form of Unicode capability. This would handle any Unicode characters and therefore any language defined in the Unicode standard. Again, set up is proprietary.