Preparing to localize your application might require additional configuration of your Oracle database to avoid problems with database size limits. The Pega 7 Platform checks string length in characters; however Oracle, by default, checks string length in bytes. Several languages do not have a 1:1 relationship between bytes and characters, for example:

• Cyrillic uses additional bytes to identify characters.
• Chinese and other languages use multibyte character sets.

This means that a text field that is acceptable in English and can be successfully saved to the BLOB might exceed the size limits for the relational database column.

Oracle supports two types of character semantics, BYTE (the default) and CHAR. To support Unicode and other international character sets, set the semantics to CHAR:

• For existing systems, see Migrating database character sets for Oracle.
• For new systems, follow the instructions in your installation guide.