DBTUNE UNICODE_STRING FALSE when creating text field NVARCHAR2 vs. VARCHAR2

[WesKing]

Hi Everyone,
Our DBTUNE configuration parameters include UNICODE_STRING entry set as FALSE.

Everyone who creates a text field in Oracle/SDE ends up with a NVARCHAR2 field except 1 person.  That person has "God" permissions and when he creates a text field it is VARCHAR2...as it should be.

How is this possible?  Isn't there just 1 DBTUNE table that is used by all users?  We've tested this using Desktop 10.0 and 10.1, our connection parameters are the same, we've checked the DBTUNE table.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Wes

[EmadAl-Mousa]

Hi,

according to this link: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//002n0000001q000000

setting UNICODE_STRING parameter is set to FALSE, a string data type would be VARCHAR2.

it should work with you !

i usually customize a DBTUNE keyword for each geodatabase schema that i use in Oracle.

what is your current Oracle Character SET ?

Also, what permissions (privileges and roles) you have granted to the user that was able to create a text field in VARCHAR2 ?

[WesKing]

Hi Mouseam,
Thanks for your reply!  Keep in mind I'm not a DBA or Sys Admin so my understanding of these things is minimal.

We've been looking into things further after discovering this problem and found we're pretty sure it has nothing to do with privileges.  What I said in my first posting turned out to be incorrect.

Here's what we know at this point.  When creating a new table everything works as it is supposed to (text fields = VARCHAR2, etc.).  However we have some tables that show up as "SDE Table" types and some that just show up as "Table".  If we add a new text field to these tables it is NVARCHAR2.  Important to note, we do have 2 database instances but these tables are in the instance where the DBTUNE table had the setting for UNICODE_STRING FALSE and can't be modified from the other instance.  These tables say they are registered with SDE, but I believe since they aren't SDE_Table types, they are not using the DBTUNE table when changes are made (adding a field).

After this info., do you have any ideas?  Do you know the difference between a "Table" and "SDE_Table"?  Could it be that the table was created outside of Arc?

Our character set is WE8MSWIN1252

Thanks, Wes