title: utf-8 to utf-16 conversion in oracle
body: <p>I actually stored resources in DB in UTF-8 format. But when I want to convert them all into UTF-16 now. As the german language is having some characters like 1/4. Now I want to avoid those. I have tried with following the statement, but got some boxes in result string....</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; select convert('Inhalt hinzufÃ¼gen','AL16UTF16LE','AL32UTF8') from dual
    result : it is not allowing me to copy paste it :(. But result is coming properly except boxes in middle of each character
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is there any alternative approach?</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT *
    FROM v$nls_parameters
   WHERE parameter LIKE '%CHARACTERSET';
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>indicates that my database character set is WE8MSWIN1252 while my national character set is AL32UTF16.</p>
  
  <p>When I use the <code>DUMP</code> function to view the data that is actually stored in my table, this is the output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT dump( your_column, 1016 ), your_column
    FROM your_table
   WHERE some_key_column = &lt;&lt;value that gives you the row you're interested in&gt;&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Typ=1 Len=54 CharacterSet=WE8MSWIN1252:
    4d,c3,b6,63,68,74,65,6e,20,53,69,65,20,64,69,65,73,65,20,5a,65,69,6c,65,20,77,69‌​,72,6b,6c,69,63,68,20,65,6e,64,67,c3,bc,6c,74,69,67,20,6c,c3,b6,73,63,68,65,6e,3f​,
    MÃ¶chten Sie diese Zeile wirklich endgÃ¼ltig lÃ¶schen?</p>
  </blockquote>