Trouble with MSSQL Reporting Services and Oracle: PLS-00553: character set

Question

First off, Oracle version is 8.1.7.4.0. SQL is 64bit 2005 on Windows 2003 with all the latest patches. We’re using the Oracle 10.2 client on the SQL box.
A few months ago queries against Oracle stopped working on our MSSQL reporting services server - after a service pack on this same system.
I ended up having to grant permissions on Oracle directories to eliminate the first error and then renamed the NLS_LANG registry entry (effectively deleting it) to get rid of the second error.
The second error was: ORA-12705: Cannot access NLS data files or invalid environment specified. I don’t have docs on the first error, but it was a reference to a file access problem. Looking at this error again makes me think that I still have some file access problems.
The old value for the NLS_LANG registry key was: AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252
Everything has been working fine since then.
Now we are moving some new reports into production which use Oracle stored procedures and they are getting this error:
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
w3wp!processing!8!7/27/2009-09:26:09:: e ERROR: An exception has occurred in data source 'CSUD3_RPTAPL'. Details: Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportProcessing.ReportProcessingException: Query execution failed for data set 'MYDATASET'. ---> System.Data.OracleClient.OracleException: ORA-06550: line 1, column 57:
PLS-00553: character set name is not recognized
ORA-06550: line 0, column 0:
PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated
I've created a test package as below, which has also gotten the same error.
create or replace
PACKAGE BODY SQLTEST AS
PROCEDURE OPEN_CURSOR (ResultCursor OUT T_CURSOR,
SQLTESTIN IN VARCHAR
AS
l_query varchar2(3000);
BEGIN
l_query := 'Hi there';
open ResultCursor for select l_query "field1" from dual;
END OPEN_CURSOR;
END SQLTEST;
I tried setting the NLS_Lang value back to its old value, but it did not fix this problem – and made all the regular oracle queries break again.
From what I've read, the client should be using the database default if the charset is not specified on the client.
Can anyone advise on what the problem might be?
Thanks!
Sam Greene

Answer 1

With all due respects I can not think of a worse reporting tool than MS Reporting Services.
Give serious consideration to getting a real report writing tool from Oracle or SAP (Business Objects / Crystal).
Reporting Services is one nightmare after another.