Hi guys

Okay, so you switched to Oracle SQL Developer for the main reason that the suite is from Oracle & it is absolutely free and putting loads of efforts to get accustomed with certain “JAVA” platform limitations (as per developers).

Everything is fine until you start getting “ORA-20001: Oracle error -6502: ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small has been detected in fnd_global.set_nls” or errors those WERE never happening while you were trying to execute years old PL/SQL blocks which were always completing successfully using Quest TOAD or at SQL prompt itself.

Before scavenging through your archives to find the Toad Installer for a re-installation, give the following exercise a try.

Applicable to Windows ONLY!

Go to user specific “AppData\Roaming” folder, eg: C:\Users\rajesh\AppData\Roaming

and delete both the folders, “SQL Developer” & “sqldeveloper”

Usually whenever you download and start the latest version of SQL Developer, the new version checks for the older versions under Roaming profile & if found, prompts the user asking whether the existing preferences should be copied (that includes already saved connections and other setting you may have made), which may cause errors like the ONE I have had once after migrating 19.2.x to 19.4.x

Regardless whether you were using previous versions or NOT, deleting all folders for “SQL Developer” under the roaming profile will force the latest version of Oracle SQL Developer to start afresh & most probably will take care of unreliable error messages (Confirmed by running the PL/SQL blocks without outputting the same errors using Quest TOAD)

Thank me later ;)

rajesh