Why when writing to Oracle, are the fieldnames in my table pre-fixed with Q_?

Symptom

When creating a table in Oracle using FME Workbench where the first character of a fieldname is non-ascii i.e Üçak, the fieldname is prefixed with Q_, i.e. Q_Üçak. This only happens if the fieldname starts with a non ascii character.

Cause

This is happening because FME checks to see if the first character is numeric because most databases prevent a numeric starting character in a field name. Unfortunately it also thinks special characters are numbers too.

Resolution

The workaround is to go to this file:

FME Desktop: <FME Install DIR>\metafile\oracle8iDefDestination.fmi

FME Server: <FME Server Install DIR>\FMEServer\Server\fme\metafile\oracle8iDefDestination.fmi

...open this file in a text editor and locate the following parameter ATTRIBUTE_CASE UPPER_FIRST_ALPHA and comment it out by placing a ! at the front. Restart FME (or FME Server) and run the workspace again. You will need to drop the table first (if your feature type is not dropping the table). This will remove the Q_ from the beginning of the attribute names, however you must be cautious because, NOW when writing to Oracle, you can create numbers at the start of the fieldname.