DBD::ORACLE - empty strings in result while there supposed to be values

Ricardo has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi. Sorry if this turns out to be a newbie mistake, but I've run into an odd problem while using DBD::Oracle. For some reason, my sql statement results in empty strings. Instead of getting the value i want to see there is a "''," (please see below). The amount of columns (6 in this case) are correct. I'm using perl v5.8.8, DBD::Oracle v1.19, Oracle instantclient-basic - instantclient-devel and sqlplus. Does someone know what i'm doing wrong? How do i get the values correctly like in sqlplus?

When i manually do a query with help of sqlplus of the Oracle instant client it is ok (see below).

This is the result with the empty strings when using DBD::Oracle :

main::(db1.pl:47): my $result = $sth->dump_results;

'', '', '', '', '', ''
'', '', '', '', '', ''
'', '', '', '', '', ''
'', '', '', '', '', ''
'', '', '', '', '', ''
5 rows

This is the result when using sqlplus :

node1# ./sqlplus login/login@//ip:port/db

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on Wed Oct 10 10:36:34 2007
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Compatible Release 9.2.0.4.0
Oracle Rdb OCI Server Release 7.1.6.2.1 - Production, Level 1.7
Oracle Rdb SQL Release 7.1.4.0.0 - Production
SQL> select * from table;
table1 ta table3 t table5 table 6
------ -- ------ - ------ -------------
004400 10 075935 0 075935 1
004400 10 075938 0 075938 1
520020 71 127464 0 127464 1
004400 10 075939 0 075939 1
004400 10 075945 0 075945 1
5 rows selected.
SQL

This is the code i'm using :

#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;
use DBD::Oracle;

$ENV{'LD_LIBRARY_PATH'} = '/home/httpd/perl/instantclient_11_1/';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8';
#$$ENV{'NLS_NCHAR'} = 'AL32UTF8';
#$ENV{'NLS_NCHAR'} = 'UTF8';
#$ENV{NLS_LANG}="AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MACROMAN8S";
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'WE8ISO8859P1';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'WE8MSWIN1252';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'US7ASCII';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'UTF8';
#$ENV{'NLS_LANG'} = 'AL32UTF32';
$ENV{NLS_LANG} = 'american_america.we8iso8859p1';

my $host=
my $sid=
my $port=
my $user =
my $passwd =

my $dbh = DBI&gt;connect("dbi:Oracle:host=$host;port=$port;sid=$sid", 
+$user, $passwd) or die "Unable to connect: $DBI::errstr";

my $statement = 'SELECT * FROM table';
$sth = $dbh-&gt;prepare($statement);
$sth-&gt;execute;
my $result = $sth-&gt;dump_results;
[download]

Thank you in advance,

Ricardo

Comment on DBD::ORACLE - empty strings in result while there supposed to be values Download Code

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Re: DBD::ORACLE - empty strings in result while there supposed to be values by derby (Abbot) on Oct 10, 2007 at 12:28 UTC
Hmmm ... well I would think you're either not connecting to the same server (probably not) or you're not in the database you think your in. At a minimum, your sql could be failing but you're not checking the status of your execute. I would put some error checking in place or at least set RaiseError. `my $dbh = DBI->connect( "dbi:Oracle:host=$host;port=$port;sid=$sid", $user, $passwd, {RaiseError => 1} );` [download] -derby	[reply] [d/l]
Re: DBD::ORACLE - empty strings in result while there supposed to be values by dwhite20899 (Friar) on Oct 10, 2007 at 12:31 UTC
I don't use Oracle, but I think you should be doing a LOT of error checking while you're developing. See the examples here for some ideas. And don't use "select *" - use the column names you want - using column names is more efficient and safer down the road.	[reply]
Re: DBD::ORACLE - empty strings in result while there supposed to be values by rdfield (Priest) on Oct 10, 2007 at 14:34 UTC
Looks like you're connecting to Rdb rather than Oracle. I wouldn't have thought that was supported by DBI. BTW, you don't need `use DBD::Oracle;` [download] as DBI handles this itself. rdfield	[reply] [d/l]