By default Oracle client sets character set value (NLS_LANG) to
NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1
This does not allow database applications to work with Unicode symbols properly.
On Windows setting NLS_LANG requires to edit some registry key.
On Linux one must set environment variable NLS_LANG to the proper value
Example (Linux):
NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8; export NLS_LANG
By the way for a surprise that CURSOR stands for “CURrent Set Or Records”. :)