Problem with USER as default on column after upgrade to 10.2

Question

Greetings,
We recently upgraded to 10.2 from 10.1, running on microsoft 32 bit (Windows 2003).
We have been using the same DB structure since Oracle 7.x and have not had a problem using USER as a default on a varchar2(30) column until now. The column value is being left NULL.
If I set the default to rtrim(USER) then the column is correctly filled with the logged in user.
If I create a new table with the same size column and set USER as the default it works correctly.
If I set it in the before trigger it works.
If I set the value of the column to USER in the insert it does NOT work, it leaves it NULL.
I have looked at user_tab_columns between the column not working and the newly created table that is working and see no difference.
Can anyone give me some suggestions on what else to look for? It feels like a problem with having brought the tables over from a previous version of Oracle.
Thanks in advance for any help.
M. James

Answer 1

No problem here on 10.2.0.3:
michaels>  create table t (a integer, b varchar2(30) default user)
Table created.
michaels>  insert into t (a) values (1)
1 row created.
michaels>  insert into t (a) values (1)
1 row created.
michaels>  select * from t
         A B                            
         1 SCOTT                      
         1 SCOTT                      
2 rows selected.
michaels>  select * from v$version
BANNER                                                         
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Prod
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production                         
CORE     10.2.0.3.0     Production                                     
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.3.0 - Production        
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.3.0 - Production