Have you checked which version of Oracle client is on the machine that is playing up? I have had this problem from time to time, and have never nailed it down accurately. My current theory is that it is related to some versions of Oracle client (esp Oracle 7). You may recall that Oracle 7 had a maximum VARCHAR size of 2000. Putting Oracle 7 client together with Oracle 8i server sometimes gets confused and tries to convert the VARCHARs into LONGs or something like that.
I am pretty sure (100%) that the clients all use Oracle 8 as the client as well as the server. Were you using remote views or SPT when the problem arose?
