title: How to change character set in Oracle 11g r2 Express edition
body: <p>I have to change the character set from AL32UTF8 to WE8MSWIN1252 in a Oracle 11g r2 Express instance... I tried to use the command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ALTER DATABASE CHARACTER SET WE8MSWIN1252;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But it fails saying that MSWIN1252 isn't a superset of AL32UTF8. Then I found some articles talking about CSSCAN, and that tool doesn't seem to be available in Oracle 11 Express.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/CharacterSetMigration.php" rel="noreferrer">http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/CharacterSetMigration.php</a></p>
  
  <p>Anyone has an idea on how to do that? Thanks in advance</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong>
  Clarifying a little bit: The real issue is that I'm trying to import data into a table that has a column defined as VARCHAR(6 byte). The string causing the issue is 'eq.mês', it needs 6 bytes in MSWIN1252 and 7 bytes in UT8</p>