ORA-01840 error on inserting row trough object browser

Question

Dear Oracle Community,
I'm getting the ORA-01840: Input value not long enough for date format error when I try to insert a row with the date value 24-MAY-10 with my object browser.
This is the problem column:
Column Name | Data Type| Nullable| Default | Primary Key
SIGNUPDATE |DATE |No | - | -
Now this will look like I'm using the wrong date format so I have googled and found that I should use the following query to check for the correct date format my database uses.
select * from nls_session_parameters where parameter = 'NLS_DATE_FORMAT';
This returns the DD-MON-RR format so I think I'm inserting the correct date format here.
What am I doing wrong?
I have already tried inserting with the following formats and tried replacing the - sign with the / sign.
DD-MON-RR
DD-MON-YY
DD-MON-YYYY
I have also tried using the SYSDATE is in the DD-MON-RR format trough the SQL commandline.
I'm feeling like an idiot this should be simple right?
Please help me out here this is frustrating, many thanks in advance.
J Nijman

Answer 1

using the SYSDATE is in the DD-MON-RR format trough the SQL commandlineIn sqlplus try:
insert into <tablename> ( <date columnname> [, ... ] ) values ( sysdate [, ...] );
To get a sysdate date value added. Or specify the format string with a to_date expression:
insert into <tablename> ( <date columnname> [, ... ] ) values ( to_date( '24-may-10', 'dd-mon-yy') [, ... ] );
The engine isn't picky about separators agreeing with the format string, most any character in place of the '-' dash is acceptable.
Now to get an ora-1840 out of the object browser (Table/Data/Insert Row), I'm not having any luck trying to duplicate that. With the default nls_date_format 'DD-MON-YY' even trying bad dates (i.e. 30-feb-10 or 30-feb-2010, or even 31-apr-10) it either does an ora-1839: date not valid for month specified, or with a four digit year it gives an ora-1830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string.
Any RDBMS presents programmers with date and datetime challenges, its not just an oracle-frustration thing ;)