Query Builder session settings as a solve to ORA-01843 (not a valid month)

Question

Hi All! I'm novice at Oracle and RDBMS, so sorry for a dummy question.
I'm trying to make some queries to a tutorial database (10g XE) with Query Builder of Application Express 2.1000039.
I'm requesting columns with id, date of order and status of order; in a column of ordering date as a "where" condition I've wrote:
>= to_date('23-JUN-2006', 'DD-MON-RRRR') and got an error "ORA-01843: not a valid month".
Then I've edited row filtering condition:
>= to_date('23-JUN-2006', 'DD-MON-RRRR', 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE = american') and 've got a correct query result, BUT resulting table date format is DD-MM-RR.
So, here is a couple of questions:
1. Can I change a session settings (e.g. alter session set NLS_DATE_FORMAT = 'DD-MON-RRRR') such way, to use it in Query Builder, before building an application itself and not to write 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE = american' every time I'm inserting data to a date datatype field?
2. I wonder why resulting table date format is 'DD-MM-RRRR'. How can I get a data exactly in a date format 'DD-MON-RRRR', how I'm specifying in a query?
My operating system is Windows 7 Home Basic, NLS_DATE_FORMAT is DD-MON-YYYY in 2 cases in register and respectively in environment variable.
SQL*Plus displays all mentionted query tables correctly, corresponding to an 'ALTER SESSION ..... SETTINGS'.
Hope to your help, guys. Thanks for answers!

Answer 1

Hi,
you can run the following query so you will see the session parameter values, and any differences with database and instance values :
SELECT
  a1.parameter as "Parameter",
  a1.value as "Database value",
  a2.value as "Instance value",
  a3.value as "Session value"
FROM
  nls_database_parameters a1
  LEFT JOIN nls_instance_parameters a2 ON a1.parameter = a2.parameter
  LEFT JOIN nls_session_parameters a3 ON a1.parameter = a3.parameter
ORDER BY
  a1.parameter ASC;What are the values for NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE and NLS_DATE_FORMAT ?
1. Can I change a session settings such way, to use it in Query Builder, before building an application itself and not to write 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE = american' every time I'm inserting data to a date datatype field?In the application, It depends on the Application Primary Language and Application Date Format you have set in the application globalization attributes. But you can also alter the session every time the APEX engine connects to the database, by entering some PL/SQL code in the Initialization PL/SQL Code attribute of the application (Application Builder -> Application -> Edit Security Attributes) :
BEGIN
   EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE = ''AMERICAN'' ';
END;In all cases application level settings will only affect the application, not SQL Commands and Query Builder. I think you have to alter session manually each time for these two last tools :/