What does 'nls' in nls_date_format stand for?

Question

For example:

alter session set nls_date_format = 'DD-MON-YYYY hh24:mi:ss';

changes the date format for the session.

What is nls here?

Answer 1

National Language Support (because Americans have this weird idea of using MM-DD-YYYY as a date format, and different languages have different words for their months).

Answer 2

The Oracle Concepts Guide for 11.2 says the following (The note is of particular interest):

Globalization Support Environment

The globalization support environment includes the client application and the database. You can control language-dependent operations by setting parameters and environment variables on the client and server, which may exist in separate locations.

Note: In previous releases, Oracle referred to globalization support capabilities as National Language Support (NLS) features. NLS is actually a subset of globalization support and provides the ability to choose a national language and store data in a specific character set.

Oracle Database provides globalization support for features such as:

• Native languages and territories

• Local formats for date, time, numbers, and currency

• Calendar systems (Gregorian, Japanese, Imperial, Thai Buddha, and so on)

• Multiple character sets, including Unicode

• Character semantics