Question

Am a Oracle PL/SQL newbie. Basically, I have a table created as follows:

CREATE TABLE MYTABLE (
    ID                 VARCHAR2(3 CHAR) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    LAST_UPDATE        DATE
);

Am trying to write a script which will run through SQL*Plus command:

insert into MYTABLE (
    id,
    last_update)
    values (
    sys_guid,
    --- Date call - what is placed here?
);

What can I do to insure that the date inserted is the correct date (at time of insertion) with this format (what function to call):

27-Oct-11

Will need this script to be executable from within SQL*Plus (read that there’s numerous amounts of incompatibilities between ANSI SQL & PL/SQL running from SQL Developer vs. SQL*Plus).

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Answer 1

Date fields don’t have a format. You apply a format when you select them by using the to_char function. So what you want to do is

insert into mytable 
  (id, last_update) 
values
  (sys_guid, SYSDATE);

And you select from it using

select id, to_char(last_update, 'DD-Mon-YY')
from mytable;