Why when writing to Oracle coulms in my table are pre-fixed with Q_?

Article Number: 000002171 - Last Modified: Feb 7, 2012

When creating a table in Oracle with column names where the first character is non-ascii i.e Üçak the column is prefixed with Q_. The solution is to edit a metafile located with FME.

Symptoms

When creating a table in Oracle using FME Workbench where the first character is non-ascii i.e Üçak, the column is prefixed with Q_, i.e. Q_Üçak. This only happens if the coumn starts with a non ascii character.

Cause

This is happening because FME checks to see if the first character is numeric because most databases prevent a numeric opening character. Unfortunately it also thinks special characters are numbers too.

Resolution

The workaround is to go to this file:

<FME Install DIR>\metafile\oracle8iDefDestination.fmi

...open this file in a text editor and locate the following parameter ATTRIBUTE_CASE UPPER_FIRST_ALPHA and comment it out by placing a ! at the front. Shutdown FME and run the workspace again. You will need to drop the table first. This will remove the Q_ from the start but you must also be cautious as when writing to Oracle you can now write numbers at the start of the column.

If running a job on FME Server you will also have to make the same modification and restart FME Server. On server you will find the file here:

<FME Server>\Server\fme\metafile\oracle8iDefDestination.fmi