Pro*C NULLs and OCI handling therof.

On the DEC ALPHA, using Oracle 7.0 and the Pro*C compiler 1.5, I encounter the
following problem, simplified as follows (i ran into it it a more realistic application, but this describes it without any extra crap);

I've created a simple table, called TEST, with two columns, col1 (int) and col2 (char(3)). It is populated with four rows as follows;

COL1 COL2
---- ----

1       REM
2       <NULL>

Then I wrote a simple Pro*C program that does nothing more than define a cursor
to fetch the four rows. I *specifically* specify MODE=ORACLE when precompiling,
although it is supposed to be the default.

On our standard VAX-6000, the nulls are returned by either not modifying the
ints, or setting the .len portion of VARCHARS to 0. On the AXP, the sqlca.sqlcode is set to -1405, instead of remaining at 0, as it does on the 6000.

It *explicitly* states that this should not happen when MODE = ORACLE, only when MODE=[ANSI | ANSI14] and indicator variables are not used.

Why does this happen, in spite of the what the ORACLE manual states, and more
importantly, how can we correct it?

Please respond via email. If it's in the manual somewhere, i'd even be happy with just a page reference, because three of us are stumped.

AdTHANKSvance

-- 
"party people in the house it's a love thang."
            -tom tom club

sonny hays-eberts                
eberts_at_donald.uoregon.edu