setting NLS_DATE_FORMAT as OS environment variable

I remember quite well that during Y2K testing in 1999 (Oracle 7.3) we noticed that NLS_DATE_FORMAT could be set at 3 different levels:
- server-wide as ini.ora parameter

• for individual session with ALTER SESSION
• for a client program (like SQL*Plus) by setting it as OS environment variable (although it did not work with all client-side programs, for example, it did not work with SQL*Loader).

Later I used this knowledge to get RMAN to display hours,minutes, and seconds in its logfile (Oracle 8.1.6):

export NLS_DATE_FORMAT='DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS' rman ...

Now I tried the same thing for Oracle 9.2.0 on Windows 2000. Results are really strange:

sqlplus /nolog, connect / as sysdba, select sysdate from dual; returns '27/07/03' - OK, this is what I expected. Now
C:\> set NLS_DATE_FORMAT='DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS' "sqlplus /nolog, connect / as sysdba" leads to "connected to idle instance"! Why??? The instance is running, it did not crash, I am still connected from another session. If I unset NLS_DATE_FORMAT (set to empty string) then I can connect again. The same happens with RMAN: if this variable is not set then I can start RMAN and "connect target /" without problems but with NLS_DATE_FORMAT I am getting error.

Thanks Received on Sun Jul 27 2003 - 04:03:03 CDT