Question

I have an oracle DATE column and the value of a particular record for the column is

16/10/2005 11:13:34 AM.

Now I am putting in a filter like this where the filter string is passed in from the front end.

date_col between to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') and to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') 

It returns zero records. Why is this happening? I was thinking oracle would return all records that have a date of 16/10/2005 irrespective of the time.
Do i need to pass in thetime also/From the front end, I only get date and not time.

Answer 1

date_col between to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') 
     and to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') 

will only return DATE values of midnight on October 16, 2005. If you want to fetch data for any time on October 16, 2005

date_col between to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') 
             and to_date('16-10-2005 23:59:59','DD-MM-YYYY HH24:MI:SS') 

will do it. So would

date_col between to_date('16-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') 
             and to_date('17-10-2005','DD-MM-YYYY') - interval '1' second

If you fail to subtract that second, you’ll also end up pulling rows that have a date_col value of midnight on October 17, 2005.

You could also apply a trunc function to your date_col

trunc(date_col) = date '2005-10-16'

but that would prevent a standard index on date_col from being used. You would generally need to create a function-based index on trunc(date_col)

CREATE INDEX idx_trunc_date_col
    ON table_name( trunc(date_col) );