Selecting NVARCHAR2 Data Using the Oracle Provider for OLE 11.2 Fails With: Msg 7356, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 inconsistent metadata for a column

Last updated on MAY 30, 2017

Applies to:

Symptoms

Executing a select query against a NVARCHAR2 column using the Oracle Provider for OLE DB 11.2 fails with:

Msg 7356, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The OLE DB provider "OraOLEDB.Oracle" for linked server "LINKEDSERVERNAME" supplied inconsistent metadata for a column. The column "C1" (compile-time ordinal 1) of object ""SCHEMANAME"."TABLENAME"" was reported to have a "LENGTH" of <nn> at compile time and <nnn> at run time.

*Where <nn> is the actual size of the column defined in the database and <nnn> is a number double that size.

The error is specific to using the three part query syntax:

select count(*) from LINKEDSERVERNAME..SCHEMA.TABLENAME

Using OpenQuery works and can be utilized as a workaround:

select * from OpenQuery(LINKEDSERVERNAME,'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM SCHEMA.TABLENAME')

Changes

Upgraded the Oracle Provider for OLE DB to 11.2.0.1.0.

Cause