According to the Oracle website there are 2 versions available of the 10g XE database. Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Western European) and Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Universal). It appears, after trying to install Qute, that the Western European edition differs from the Universal edition not only by the char setting (Single Byte LATIN-1 resp. Multi-byte Unicode), but also by the way some functions are implemented. By personal experience and according to Steven Feuersteins post: Some gotchas with Oracle XE it appears to have a difference in the way Java is handled.
Why does Oracle do this. Why must there be a different version for the european side of the world. For the Character setting, I can understand it (a bit), but I don’t understand why the technical implementation should be so different.