Application Date Format 12-¿¿¿-2004

Question

Why date formats are not interpreted correctly ?
Apex 3.2 , ORA XE, Win XP 32 SP2,
When opening particular application:
Home>Application Builder>Application 31517>Shared Components>Edit Globalization Attributes
Application Date Format ( List of Values )
The window appears with:
12-¿¿¿-04
12-¿¿¿-2004
12-¿¿¿
04-¿¿¿-12
2004-01-12
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, 12 ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, 2004
12-¿¿¿-2004 14:30
12-¿¿¿-2004 14:30:00
12-¿¿¿-2004 02:30PM
16 hours ago
Row(s) 1 - 11
I have tried with changeing some parameters, reinstall XE DB and APEX,
but without success on date format.
Any help to fix date format ?

Answer 1

Client configuration is the main factor for date formats, settings can be made in the database server for defaults but can be overridden according to the client. And check the browser language (and font) settings they can also be a factor.
Start with checking the national language settings ( sqlplus > show parameter nls;) and did you install the Western European, or Universal version? (Windows? Linux?)
Client settings are picked up from environment variables, the most important is NLS_LANG specifying client country, region, and character set so that the right characters are shown to the client (i.e. which currency symbol, number formats: 9,999.00 or 9.999,00) and in the U.S, we write dates as mm/dd/yy, while in the UK and most of Europe its dd/mm/yy. And the environment settings can be overridden within a session too, i.e. in sqlplus:
select sysdate from dual;
alter session set nls_date_format = 'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss';
select sysdate from dual;
And check the NLS_LANG setting ...
\[linux\]$ echo $NLS_LANG
\[win\]$ echo %NLS_LANG%
The character set for the database can cause trouble especially when the client settings are incorrect or invalid. Easiest way to find the db setting is SQL> alter database backup controlfile to trace; and check the trace file created in the user_dump_dest folder ...