Microsoft KB Archive/180193

= FIX: DAO Oracle and the NUMBER Datatype =

Article ID: 180193

Article Last Modified on 5/17/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Open Database Connectivity 2.0
 * Microsoft Data Access Components 2.1

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This article was previously published under Q180193



SYMPTOMS
When using DAO/Jet to access an Oracle database, you get either blank rows back in a grid or rows filled with #DEFINE (when using Access).



CAUSE
This behavior is caused by DAO having a problem determining the datatype for Oracle columns defined as NUMBER.



RESOLUTION
This behavior is only exhibited when the Oracle columns have been defined as NUMBER. If you define the columns as NUMBER(38,0), which is the equivalent of just NUMBER, everything works as expected. When you use DAO/Jet to access an Oracle database, you need to specify the size (total digits) and precision for table columns of type NUMBER.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft FrontPage listed at the beginning of this article. This bug was corrected in MDAC 2.1 Service Pack 2.

You can obtain the latest version of MDAC from the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/data/aa937695.aspx



MORE INFORMATION
This problem was identified using Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise edition, MDAC 1.5 (see the REFERENCES section below), and Oracle 7.3. You may see different behavior with different versions of these components. Following is an example of what will work and what will fail when creating an Oracle table that will be accessed by DAO/Jet.

This Oracle table definition will fail: CREATE TABLE daotest (item_number NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,                           depot_number NUMBER); This Oracle table definition will work: CREATE TABLE daotest (item_number NUMBER(38,0) PRIMARY KEY,                           depot_number NUMBER(38,0)); If you are using Access, the first example will fill your grid with #DELETE. If you are using Visual Basic/DAO, your grid will show the correct number of rows but they won't contain any data. You can still insert records but you never get the correct display.

