Thanks Dave.

Looking at it - the character set is okay. Western European can cope with German and English/US characters.

I'm really trying to change the NLS_DATE_FORMAT as the application running on it keeps returning INVALID_MONTH errors (ORA-01843). The German default is DD-MM-YY and I think the application (via ODBC) is passing DD-MON-YY to the database. I can't get at the source code so I can't check exactly what's going on.

I've tried setting the init.ora file NLS_DATE_FORMAT parameter but it doesn't seem to take effect (??). I've also set NLS_LANGUAGE and NLS_TERRITORY and this doesn't seem to work either. The Alert file shows the new params at startup but when you fire up SQL*Plus and look - the old parameters still hold sway.

I can dynamically change them using ALTER SESSION but that's not good enough. I need it to be permanent for all sessions.

Help!

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John