Application Development → Globalization
The AL32UTF8 character set is now the default for the database character set in Oracle Database installs and in the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA). Previously, the default database character set was based on the operating system locale setting. That is now offered as a secondary choice.
Business Benefit: The AL32UTF8 character set is Oracle Corporation's implementation of the industry standard UTF-8 encoding which supports all of the written languages of the world. Making AL32UTF8 the default for new database deployments enables the database to support multilingual globalized applications and avoids the potential cost of later migrating to Unicode.