Something changed in my users environment between Monday and Tuesday, possible related to October Microsoft patches to Windows 7
Environment:
PowerBuilder 12.6 build 3506, application built in PB Classic
Connecting to Oracle 11g database
Using native connect pbora126.dll
Calling an Oracle function via RPCFUNC
If the string field is defined as VARCHAR2,
if I fill the string with 8 spaces before calling the function, it arrives with 8 spaces.
If the string field is defined as CHAR( 8),
if I fill the string with 8 spaces before calling the function, it arrives with 16 spaces.
If I fill the string with 8 characters, in this test numbers, it arrives as 8 numbers followed by 8 spaces)
LENGTH( <variable>) reports accurately as 16.
I *think* behavior is something set in the session because when that function calls another function and it's got an OUT variable it is null prior to assignment, I assign a SUBSTR( <existing variable>, start, 8) I end up with a string that is 8 characters of that substring and then 8 spaces. That's nothing that was passed in from PowerBuilder, so it's something about the session created when PowerBuilder Connected.
This is what causes things to blow up because I then try to insert that value into a table field that is CHAR(8) and -12899 : ORA-12899: value too large for column
My initial suspicion is something Unicode,
I've tried using the dbparm DisableUnicode=1, but that had no effect.
If I call the same function via a database tool (I use Toad), there are no spaces added.
I cannot say for sure what the Windows environment reported before this started, but after this problem appears env.charset is charsetUnicode!
In both Toad and PowerBuilder, NLS_LANGUAGE is American as selected from the Oracle nls_Session_parameters
Any suggested paths to what I can check, has someone run into this before and has a quick DBParm option I should change?