Hello This has to do with your Oracle NLS settings. Be sure that you have correct settings for all users involved, e.g. zope, apache. Check also your zope start and stop scripts. The important NLS variables are: export NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS=".,"; export NLS_LANG=GERMAN_SWITZERLAND.WE8ISO8859P1 Off course your have to set them to your needs. Regards Dieter