Re: HELP! Default date format in SQL*Plus isn't dd-mon-yy!

"Volker Hetzer" <volker.hetzer_at_ieee.org> wrote in message news:b3knm5$e8s$1_at_dackel.pdb.sbs.de...
>
> "R" <R_at_R.R> wrote in message

news:CUk7a.94352$na.1798369_at_news2.calgary.shaw.ca...
> > What my problem (now resolved) was that I was not entering the ALTER
SESSION
> > statement correctly to set the NLS parameters. I was trying:
> >
> > SET NLS_variable = whatever
> >
> > and
> >
> > ALTER SESSION NLS_variable = whaterver
> >
> > but it's actually
> >
> > ALTER SESSION SET NLS_variable = whatever
> >
> > I'm finding Oracle to have the most inconsistent command structure that
I've
> > ever seen!
> What's wrong with it?
> That command line says that there are (or might be) several ways of
altering
> a session and setting variable is just one of them.
> Therefore the "ALTER SESSION SET ..." makes sense.

It just seems to have no structure... sometimes SET needs an "=" symbol to assign a value, sometimes not. The BREAK command separates its parameters with "ON" instead of commas. When insert data into multiple tables at one time you can't use the native column names... you must specify alias' for them. To clear the format on a column it's "COLUMN CLEAR..." but to clear all columns its "CLEAR COLUMN"

Finding any kind of help on the Oracle website is just insane. With all the icons that the Oracle install puts into my start menu it would make sense to include some kind of command reference. Oracle documentation is worse than Microsoft documentation! Received on Thu Feb 27 2003 - 07:06:57 CST