NLS Error on Second Fetch from Cursor
Oracle 8i using PRO*C
We have a UNIX (HP) environment (operational account) in which the NLS_LANG was not set for the shell. One of our applications opened a cursor for update and performed its first fetch. After processing it went back to fetch an additional buffer. At this point, the application failed with the following error: "SQLCODE: ORA-01890: NLS error detected". When we set the NLS_LANG enviroment variable this error disappeared.
I need to know what the NLS_LANG enviroment variable is doing and why it is causing the second fetch to fail when it is not set so I can argue with the powers that be to have this paremeter always set for this accounts shell (i.e. globally). No-one really knows what this does here or why it would cause the cursor to fail, and so they are telling us to just set the variable in our own applications shell.
I know the real answer to this is to set it up for the operational (global) shell but...
Thanks in advance,
Bill Rosmus