Re: nls_date_format question

In article <37A79181.10BE1A3E_at_erols.com>, Paul and Lori Brooks <brooksplc_at_erols.com> wrote:

>alter session set nls_date_format = 'DD-MON-YYYY';
>...this works from a few clients, but not all.

nls_date_format is part of the nls support hierarchy; nls_lang is at the top. If you don't specify nls_date_format, nls_lang will determine it (European style dates if you specify French for example).

It's hard to think of a reason why an explicit value for nls_date_format would be ignored within the session and on the machine where you specify it. It may help to consider whether the clients run different operating systems and if so whether this correlates with which ones accept the parameter.

I have found that I can specify nls_date_format in Windows in c:\windows\oracle.ini but not in AIX (IBM Unix). (I can set it as an environment variable but sqlplus ignores it, even though it responds to nls_lang set in the same manner.) I need to specify it for server sessions but not client sessions. My workaround is to specify it in init.ora on the AIX database server and count on the nls_lang parameter, which seems to be specified on most or all Windows clients, to protect them from it.

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