Re: NLS_LANG problems

Ok...after a little more investigation on google groups...I have determined that the scope of the nls_lang parameter is only as an environment variable. However changing it makes no difference.

I also found a posting from Sybrand Bakker: "There is a sys table called prop$. One of the attributes is the character set of the database"

While this enables changes to the nls_characterset (and nchar) it still does nothing for the display of the danish characters that I need.

Is it because the db was originally created with a 7-bit characterset and therefore cannot be changed to an 8-bit? Again is my only option to create a new database with the characterset that I need ? (which incidently by now probably would have taken less time, but one becomes stubborn)

• Tom Williams Auga ApS

"Tom Williams" <tom_at_auga.com> wrote in message news:f7nR7.6376$z4.790124_at_news000.worldonline.dk...
> Hi,
>
> We are running an Oracle 8i Enterprise Edition release 8.1.7.0.1 on RedHat
> Linux 7.2.
>
> The default characterset which the database was created with was US7ASCII
> and I need to change it to WE8ISO8859P1, however, I am having some
problems
> with this.
>
> NLS_LANG is not defined in any of the following views:
> nls_session_parameters
> nls_instance_parameters
> nls_database_parameters
>
> If I in an sql+ session try to execute the statement:
> alter session set nls_lang = AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1
> or
> alter session set nls_lang = .WE8ISO8859P1
>
> I get the following error:
> ora-00922: missing or invalid option
>
> Also if I try to include the line:
> nls_lang = AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1
> in my init.ora file and restart the database I get the following error:
> SVRMGR> LRM-00101: unknown parameter name 'nls_lang'
> ORA-01078: failure in processing system parameters
>
> I have checked that the characterset WE8ISO8859P1 exists in
> v$nls_valid_values as a corresponding VALUE to the PARAMETER
'CHARACTERSET'.
>
> Optimally, I would like the database to default to the WE8ISO8859P1
> characterset, but I could live with just being able to alter my client
> sessions. What is the proper way to this without having to create a new
> database? What am I overlooking in the documentation?
>
> - Tom Williams
> Auga ApS
>
>
Received on Tue Dec 11 2001 - 08:57:39 CST