Re: ORA-01459:Invalid length for variable character string - please HELP!

In article <1995Nov9.142638.1_at_ccc.govt.nz>, phil_at_ccc.govt.nz writes:
|> We have a Delphi C/S application running under W4W3.11 using Oracle
|> 7.1 on NT3.51 as a back end. Users who log onto the application run
|> quite happily for a variable length of time (normally 10-30 mins)
|> and then receive the following error "General SQL error.
|> ORA-01459:invalid length for variable character string". The error
|> occurs during a SQL query to the database and necessitates the user
|> exiting the application (sometimes out of windows altogether) and then
|> re-entering it again. Where the error occurs is not consistent
|> (perhaps indicating a resource problem). The Oracle documentation
|> is not much help, saying that no action can be taken to correct the
|> problem.

I think we used to get this error occasionally (under Unix on Pyramids) in queries where an indexed character column was concatenated with the null string to disable the index (e.g. WHERE ENAME||'' = 'CHANG' ). I forget what kind of research we did into the problem, which seems like a bug. In a lot of cases we just changed index-disabling methods (e.g. WHERE RTRIM(ENAME) = 'CHANG' ). The problem may have gone away with one of the little 7.1.x upgrades.

Hoping to be helpful, sorry to be vague. Received on Thu Nov 09 1995 - 00:00:00 CET