Environment variables for Oracle

NLS_LANG has the following format: LANGUAGE_TERRITORY.CHARACTERSET. See also nls_language.

LANGUAGE controls the language of messages, as well as the day and month names. It also influences the sort behavior. A LANGUAGE has a default TERRITORY and CHARACTERSET assigned with it, so it is possible to only assign a LANGUAGE to NLS_LANG.

TERRITORY controls the default date format, the decimal character and group seperator.

The environment variable points to teh oracle_home directory.

Under Windows, usually the ORACLE_HOME is pointed at through the registry.

Name of the SID.

This variable should point to the directory in which the tnsnames.ora file is located.

• The variable's value must be set in uppercase on Unix systems.
• If the variable is not set, the default location is searched.
• If the directory cannot be read, an ORA-12705 is raised.