Sqldeveloper ORA-12705 NLS parameter problem

Question

Hi,
I just have installed sqldeveloper 1.2.1.
I´m using Oracle 9i with american_america character set.
My Win XP regional settings: Español (Ecuador) = Spanish (Ecuador)
I configured sqldevloper with Language=American, Territory=Ecuador, Sort=Spanish, Comp=Binary and Date Language=American. However, I get connected to the db succesfully, but I got an annoying message (2 times):
An error was encountered performing the following operation:
ORA-12705: Invalid or unknown NLS parameter value especifed.........
It could be great if someone could help me to get rid of this messages...
Regards,
Santiago

Answer 1

Fixed ORA-12705 with sqldeveloper Version 1.5.1 Build MAIN-5440 on Windows XP
I also had ORA-12705 Cannot access NLS data files or invalid environment specified on connect to DBMS instance and was able to track it down to the environemnt variable ORACLE_HOME which I had set in the dos command box as below:
ORACLE_HOME=C:\programs\oracle\product\10.2
That pointed to an Oracle Client ORACLE_HOME.
I realized that the error goes away if:
a) I remove ORACLE_HOME from the environment, i.e. "set ORACLE_HOME=" in the does box or
b) I set ORACLE_HOME=C:\programs\oracle\product\11.1, where this is an 11.1 SERVER ORACLE_HOME
Using regmon I saw that sqldeveloper does not access the Windows registry. Unfortunately I was unable to determine the root cause why the error occured when ORACLE_HOME pointed to the 10.2 client ORACLE_HOME. All I can say is it was not due to file access permissions.
I was also unable to determine why sqldeveloper kept using C:\programs\oracle\product\10.2\jdbc\lib\ojdbc14.jar even when ORACLE_HOME did not point to C:\programs\oracle\product\10.2.
With ORACLE_HOME=C:\programs\oracle\product\11.1 the following jar file was used for JDBC:
C:\programs\oracle\product\11.1\jdbc\lib\ojdbc5.jar
When I'm setting "set ORACLE_HOME=C:\programs\sqldeveloper", which is the installation directory of sqldeveloper, then it works fine and filemon utility shows that it uses this JDBC jar file:
C:\programs\sqldeveloper\jdbc\lib\ojdbc5.jar
Unfortunately neither Oracle® Database SQL Developer Installation Guide Release 1.5 E12153-02 nor Oracle® Database
SQL Developer User’s Guide Release 1.5 E12152-05 (the latest editions as of Dec 08) say anything about ORACLE_HOME that applies.
However this info in the "User's Guide" is noteworthy: "_Note that SQL Developer does not use default values from the current system for globalization support parameters_;"
This seems to indicate that any NLS_* parameters in the registry and environment (DOS box) are ignored. Go to Tools > Preferences > Database > NLS in sqldeveloper to set them. But there is no way to set the character set!