Question

I have a date column whose type is DATE and values are of the form 23-AUG-12, 09-FEB-12. Now i am trying to run a query but i am getting error that

ORA-01843: not a valid month
01843. 00000 -  "not a valid month"
*Cause:    
*Action:

Here is the query. Actually i want to get the current date on the right side of first_appr_dt = current date

select LOSA_APP.app_ref_no AS "App.Ref.No." from losa_app LOSA_APP where 
LOSA_APP.app_status='A' and first_appr_dt = 
(SELECT TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'MM-DD-YYYY') from dual);

What i am doing wrong ? Please help .

Thanks

Answer 1

If the column first_appr_dt is really a DATE column, then there’s no need to to compare the dates as string. In fact, it’s probably the source of the problem.

Furthermore, there’s no need select from DUAL for this simple expression.

You rather want:

select LOSA_APP.app_ref_no AS "App.Ref.No." from losa_app LOSA_APP
where LOSA_APP.app_status = 'A' and first_appr_dt = trunc(sysdate);

Note, that the query uses TRUNC to remove the time from the date as your table probably contains dates with the time set to 00:00:00. If not, then you should try the following condition:

trunc(first_appr_dt) = trunc(sysdate)

If you really want to compare the dates as strings, then you would need to use TO_CHAR for both sides of the comparison:

to_char(first_appr_dt, 'DD-MON-YYYY') = to_char(sysdate, 'DD-MON-YYYY')