Getting ORA-24424 errors when checking in from a workarea

Products

• CA Harvest Software Change Manager - OpenMake Meister

Issue/Introduction

Got this error while checking in a work area. 
E03020028: The File Agent error for item <filename> ... (message was truncated)
E03020003: Database error [Oracle}{ODBC}{Ora]ORA-24424: Invalid attempt to define at position 0 
SQLSTATE=S1000. 
I00060079: Check in summary: Total: 192; Success: 93; Failed: 1; Not Processed: 98. 
E03060019: Process Execute failed. Process Name: CHECK IN CHANGED ITEMS PROCESS. 
 

Environment

Release:
Component: HINTGR

Resolution

All previous cases I could find containing this Oracle error code turned out to be situations where they were trying to check in a file that Harvest “thinks” should be treated as text, but has Unicode characters in it. I’m not exactly sure why it’s throwing the Oracle error instead of: 

E03020028: The File Agent error for item <folder\file name>: Text file contains invalid characters. 

But in all the cases I found, the remedy was either to configure the repository to handle all files as binary, or to scan the file having problems and remove any Unicode characters.