When creating a database specifically for Arabic or Urdu applications, the AR8MSWIN1256 character set is often the recommended choice. This character set efficiently handles right-to-left text while maintaining compatibility with Windows Arabic locale settings.
The NLS_LANG environment variable tells the Oracle Client (Developer 6i) how to interpret data coming from the database. Because Developer 6i is a non-Unicode (ANSI) legacy application, setting the client NLS_LANG to AL32UTF8 will cause the application to crash or display garbage characters. When creating a database specifically for Arabic or