My string  actually comes from Swing JFileChooser or cut and paste to Swing text box, so I would have Java native string "utf16". If you use jdbc  PreparedStaement with setString method call this would get converted to National Character of Oracle for you. Problem is I am trying to make min changes to code  and not have to add a filter for an specific field. How can I convert utf16 to escaped unicode without adding too much overhead?