title: Oracle ODBC: Why are national characters changed to Latin equivalent in SELECT result
body: <p>I have Oracle 11 database to which I connect using both JDBC and ODBC. JDBC works well, but in ODBC all Polish letters in <code>SELECT</code> result are changed to Latin equivalent, for example <code>ą</code> -> <code>a</code>, <code>Ó</code> -> <code>O</code> etc. I tested it with my application and simple Python program that uses <code>odbc</code> module. The same value from database is returned as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ZAMOŚĆ - by JDBC
  ZAMOSC - by ODBC
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My environment:</p>
  
  <p>DB server: Oracle Database 11g Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production </p>
  
  <p>Client machine:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit</li>
  <li>Oracle clients in 32 bit and 64 bit versions in: <code>c:\Oracle\Ora1120_32bit</code> and <code>c:\Oracle\Ora1120_64bit</code></li>
  <li>ODBC manager reports Oracle driver version as: 11.02.00.01</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I think that all locales are set to Poland/Polish, but they are not visible
  by <code>SET</code> command line utility.</p>
  
  <p>Anybody knows what ODBC or environment setting is responsible for translation of Polish letters into Latin equivalents?</p>