All,

Hope someone can help me with this...I just started working on a project for a company and have an Oracle issue to coordinate resolution.  I say coordinate because I am not an Oracle person.  I am pushing the Tech Support people.

Here is the problem, Sun Solaris Systems running an Oracle database with Sun clustering and failover, primary server runs fine, but when on fail-over the date format changes; ie: mm/dd/yy to dd/mm/yy.  This causes problems with the application as the data is mis-interpreted.

Particulars:
Oracle 10g Standard Edition
Sun Solaris 9
sun cluster with failover on a fiber array.

Tech people state that systems are identical and since there are no data/app errors the problem is not being properly investigated.

Is someone out there able to help.  If there is another more proper forum for the post please advise and my apologies in advance.

Thanks in advance,
hunterfs

Are you sure both databases are identical?

I ask because as far as I was aware the defailt format for dates within Oracle is DD-MON-YY unless over ride is set in the initialisation parameter NLS_DATE_FORMAT
Obviously if these are not set the same in both your databases it could accout for the difference you are seeing?

Just a thought

thanks for the info...I will talk to the tech people and get them started.

According to the tech folks they are identical, however obviously something is not if they will not fail-over.

Here is some additional information from one of the sysadmins:  Does it add any additional light to the situation.

Interesting, but “both” databases are actually just one database which is mounted on alternate servers (the application and data are on the shared array, so install/instance is identical since it is actually physically the same). That param is in the init.ora startup file and the same exact startup file is used whether db is launched on either system. That is what the problem is, that one server takes the settings, and the other doesn’t.

Sounds like a system Locale or Lang setting somewhere
being differently set up on the different servers then

Only trouble is I don't know where to look on Solaris!
In most cases there will be a tool for changing / setting the format of the date in RH Linux for example its locale_conf
  
issue the date command on each server as the Oracle Database User and see if the format is different - if it is then you will need to change the one which doesn't match your expected Oracle settings - maybe it could be something in the profile (user).

Other than that I'm lost as to what to suggest!