Problem Connection To Apex - Getting a ORA-12705 Error in the Apache Log

Question

Hello,
We are having issues trying to connect to out Apex instance on our gateway server, as we are getting a 503 Server Temporary Unavailable response and looking in the log file we can see its reporting a:
HTTP-503 ORA-12705: invalid or unkown NLS parameter value specifiedAnd we dont know what is causing this at all. Our DBA has tried to re-create the DAD and we have had a look at our NLS settings and there doesn't seem anything to suggest there is a problem. Also our DBA has been able to connect to the database using SQL plus and as the user APEX_PUBLIC_USER. Below is our NLS settings on the database:
NLS_LANGUAGE     AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY     AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY     $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY     AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS     .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET     WE8MSWIN1252
NLS_CALENDAR     GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE     AMERICAN
NLS_SORT     BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT     HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT     HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT     DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY     $
NLS_COMP     BINARY
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS     BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP     FALSE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET     AL16UTF16
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION     11.2.0.2.0and our dad configuration is:
Alias /i/ "<$ORACLE_HOME>/Apache/images/"
AddType text/xml xbl
AddType text/x-component htc
<Location /pls/apex>
Order deny,allow
PlsqlDocumentPath docs
AllowOverride None
PlsqlDocumentProcedure wwv_flow_file_mgr.process_download
PlsqlDatabaseConnectString <host>:<port>:<service name> ServiceNameFormat
PlsqlNLSLanguage AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8
PlsqlAuthenticationMode Basic
SetHandler pls_handler
PlsqlDocumentTablename wwv_flow_file_objects$
PlsqlDatabaseUsername APEX_PUBLIC_USER
PlsqlDefaultPage apex
PlsqlDatabasePassword <apex_public_user password>
PlsqlRequestValidationFunction wwv_flow_epg_include_modules.authorize
Allow from All
</Location>Our database version is: 11.2.0.2 and our application server is 10g release 2.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Paul.

Answer 1

This is normally an issue related to environment variables.
can you connect from your application server host to your database using sqlplus.
SET NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICAN.WE8MSWIN1252
sqlplus <username>/<password>@alias