Question

I need to convert a date from this format:

2002-10-10T12:00:00-05:00
(xs:dateTime as defined in XML)

to an Oracle date.

I’m used to using this in PL/SQL: to_date(‘date here’, ‘yyyymmdd’), is there a way to convert this while keeping the time zone info?

Thanks

Answer 1

Oracle dates don’t have timezone information. You’ll need to use a TIMESTAMP datatype instead.

It works something like this:

SQL> desc tz
 Name                                      Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
 ID                                                 NUMBER
 TS                                                 TIMESTAMP(6) WITH TIME ZONE
 TNOW                                               TIMESTAMP(6) WITH TIME ZONE

SQL> insert into tz
  2  values (1
  3          , to_timestamp_tz('2002-10-10 12:00:00-05:00'
  4                           , 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SSTZH:TZM')
  5          , systimestamp)
  6  /

1 row created.

SQL> select * from tz
  2  /

        ID
----------
TS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TNOW
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
         1
10-OCT-02 12.00.00.000000 -05:00
23-AUG-10 17.37.06.502000 +01:00


SQL>

Note, there is the tricky issue of the T in the XSD notation. That hurls a ORA-01858 exception, because it’s not a valid format in Oracle. I’m sure there is a workaround, but it currently escapes me.

---

Well, one workaround is to apply SUBSTR() function sto split open the two parts of the timestamp, as Bob shows. But there ought to be a more elegant way.

---

It probably doesn’t qualify as “elegant” but as it’s a string we can use a substitution function to get rid of the annoying T:

SQL> insert into tz
  2  values (2
  3          , to_timestamp_tz(translate('2003-10-10T12:00:00-05:00', 'T', ' ')
  4                   , 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SSTZH:TZM')
  5          , systimestamp)
  6  /

1 row created.

SQL> select * from tz
  2  /

        ID
----------
TS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TNOW
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
         1
10-OCT-02 12.00.00.000000 -05:00
23-AUG-10 17.37.06.502000 +01:00

         2
10-OCT-03 12.00.00.000000 -05:00
23-AUG-10 17.53.37.113000 +01:00


SQL>

But given all the effort Oracle have put into XMLDB it is rather annoying that there isn’t a tidier solution.

---

“I dont understand how you get
-05:00.”

In my original sample I use a format mask of 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS-TZH:TZM'. This interprets the - in the time zone as a separator not a minus sign. Consequently it returned +05:00. I have since corrected my code sample to remove that last dash. Now the timezone is correctly rendered as -05:00. Sorry for any confusion.