PowerBuilder's ORA database driver has several settings that impact character set encoding. Here is a list (see docs for details) referring to both DBParm parameter name and location on Database Profile dialog:

• Tab = Connection
  • NCharLiteral = 1
    
    
• Tab = System
  • NLS_Charset = 'Unicode' (Unicode is default)
    
    
• Tab = Transction
  • NCharBind = 1
  • DisableBind = 0
  • NOTE: DisableBind=0 required for NCharBind=1 to take effect!

Good luck with your Spanish characters /Michael

I'm using TOAD and that's how entered values into the table.
Entering Spanish characters in the NVARCHAR2 columns remain intact.
Entering Spanish characters in VARCHAR2 immediately switch upon commit (assume its the US7ASCII)

The NLS_CHARACTERSET on our database is US7ASCII
The NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET is AL16UTF16

I created a test table with First_name, last_name columns (both NVARCHAR2(30))

Entered: Estában Turñer

Saved to the database and created a Grid datawindow.
It displays: Estaban Tur?er

Why am I losing the character over the "a" and the tilde n converting to "?"

Sidenote:
I created varchar2 equivalent fields and they won't save the Spanish characters

Hi as Michael already said: you don't have to do anything.

If I'm not mistaken, Varchar2 should be perfectly capable to handle Spanish characters. No need to convert to nvarchar2

What might be more important though, is the language setting of your database:

select * from nls_database_parameters where parameter like '%CHARACTERSET';

I'd recommend setting NLS_CHARACTERSET to UTF8 and NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET to UTF16.
They way to asssign that might be different depending on your Oracle version. (like UTF8 vs. AL32UTF8 ).

This is my output:
NLS_CHARACTERSET AL32UTF8
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET AL16UTF16

Hi, no problem - nothing extra to do as I remember.

PB uses UTF-16 internally. Which means any text field in PowerBuilder can display any Unicode character if your font supports that character. Some fonts included with Windows support specific character sets. You will find support for Spanish ñ in close to all character sets also supporting English A-Z. Can think of one that doesn't support it.

NVARCHAR2 is Oracle's name for Unicode in UTF-16. You just have to learn the keyboard combo for ñ and Ñ and you are good to go.

As soon as you are on NVARCHAR2 you can also handle all the other funny character we use around Europe - my Danish Æ Ø Å - Swedish Ä Ö Å for the same characters. And everything else in Unicode like Japanese, Greek, and Hebrew to name a few. - again, as long as your character set supports those characters.

Enjoy /Michael

TIP: Nice Unicode lookup page https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/
Sample search for ñ delivers https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00F1