Question

I am trying to create a function that can subtract between 2 dates but I am having some issues:

Firstly with the storing of the date, and secondly with the function.

Here is my code for storing the date in to a table:

CREATE TABLE car_info
  (
   car_id NUMBER(4)
   arrival DATE,
   departure DATE
   ......
  )

here I have saved the arrival/departure times as DATES. Ideally I will want it in the format of dd-mon-yyy-hh-mm-ss

This is where I encounter my first problem:

INSERT INTO car_info 
VALUES('0001', to_date('12-jun-2006 06:00:01'), to_date('14-jun-2006 09:00:01')

From the research I have done, this seems correct?

however if I do a SELECT * FROM car_info, this is the result:

car_id       arrival_date      departure_date
   1          12-jun-2006        14-jun-2006

Does anyone know why it is not displaying the result as a full date and time?

To stop this post getting too full of information, once I have this problem solved I will post my issues with the function.

Thanks for any help

kihd regards, Darren

Second part of question has been moved to Oracle sql – date subtraction within a function

Answer 1

DATE in Oracle is a point in time, it is not stored with a format. A format is chosen when the date is displayed so that it can be understood by humans.

DATE by default will be displayed as per your NLS_DATE_FORMAT setting. You can change this setting with the following command:

ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_FORMAT='dd-mon-yyyy hh24:mi:ss';

You could also ask for an explicit format by using TO_CHAR in your query:

SELECT to_char(arrival, 'dd-mon-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')
  FROM car_info