PRB: Numeric Value Out of Range Error with MS Oracle ODBC Driver Version 2.5 or Higher (199293)

SYMPTOMS

A client application may receive the following error when using Msorcl32.dll version 2.5 (build 2.573.2927, 2.573.3513, and 2.573.4403):

[Microsoft][ODBC Driver for Oracle]Error in column #: Numeric value out of range.

CAUSE

The earlier versions of the driver return hard-coded values for precision and scale when the Oracle database does not return these values. In the Oracle ODBC driver version 2.5, these values are set to zero in such cases according to the ODBC specifications.

In such cases, some applications that depend on these values usually bind the columns in the resultset to the lowest possible datatype (integer) for numeric datatypes. When the values go out of range for these data columns, the Oracle driver throws the error message.

For example, do the following:

Create a sequence generator using the following code:

Create SEQUENCE test_seq
INCREMENT BY 10
START WITH 32766

From Microsoft Access (do a pass-through query):
```
SELECT test_seq.NEXTVAL FROM SYS.DUAL
```

RESULTS: An "ODBC Call failed" is returned and the error above because the next value 32776 is out of range with respect to the integer datatype.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, use one of the following four workarounds:

Use the ODBC driver for Oracle version 2.573.6526 that ships with Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) version 2.6. You can download MDAC 2.6 from the following Microsoft Web site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/dataaccess.asp
Use version 1.0 of the driver.
Modify your SQL statements such that they return commonly used datatypes. For example:
```
Select TO_CHAR(test_seq.NEXTVAL) from SYS.DUAL.
					
```
Use precision and scale on Oracle's NUMBER datatype. For instance, NUMBER(10,3).