Oracle's SQL how to convert the date's format - sql

this is my table:
table name EXAMPLE
column name DATE
this is the output for the following query:
SELECT date
FROM example;
1/23/2010
I want to convert the output to:
23-Jan-10
Is it possible?
Thanks

You can use formatting along with TO_CHAR() conversion such as
SELECT TO_CHAR(dt,'DD-Mon-RR')
FROM example
where
DATE is not a good name for a column as being a reserved keyword. So, I've replaced it with dt

If your column is in varchar/text.. then you can first convert to date then back to char
SELECT
TO_CHAR(
to_date('1/23/2010','mm/dd/yyyy'),'DD-Mon-YY'
)
datec FROM dual;
If it is in date format, to_char only will do
SELECT
TO_CHAR(date_column, 'DD-Mon-YY' )
datec FROM dual;

A DATE data type is a binary format that is stored in 7-bytes that has no format and always contains the components: year (stored as century and year-of-century), month, day, hour, minute and second.
Therefore, you cannot change the format of a DATE data type.
If instead, you ask the question:
How can format a DATE to output it as 23-Jan-10?
Then you can convert the DATE to a formatted string using the TO_CHAR function:
SELECT TO_CHAR(your_date_column, 'DD-MON-YY', 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE=English')
AS formatted_date
FROM your_table;
Alternatively, if you want the output as a DATE data type then you can use:
SELECT your_date_column
FROM your_table;
and change the user interface (SQL/Plus, SQL Developer, Toad, PLSQLDeveloper, PHP, Java, etc.) you are using to alter how that that user interface displays dates. The solution is going to depend on which user interface you are using but for SQL/Plus and SQL Developer, you can change Oracle's NLS_DATE_FORMAT session parameter:
ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_FORMAT = 'DD-MON-YY';
Other user interfaces will have different solutions specific to those interfaces.

Related

How do you convert YYYY_MM to date in Oracle SQL?

I have a column which has dates as texts. Like: '2021_01' (I will reefer this column as TextDate)
I convert it to '2021-01' with this code:
SELECT REPLACE(at.TextDate,'_','-') as DataFormat FROM tableName at
But when I try to cast it to date, or convert it to date, I always get 'Missing expression' errors. I tried this:
SELECT REPLACE(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), at.TextDate, 126, '_', '-') as date FROM tableName at
But it will give me errors. Any suggestion?
convert means something completely different in Oracle than it does elsewhere. You need the to_date() function:
SELECT TO_DATE(at.textDate, 'YYYY_MM') as DataFormat FROM tableName at
If you want to display it in a particular format then you can either let your client/application do that - most clients by default will use your session's NLS_DATE_FORMAT setting - or explicitly convert it back to a string with the complementary to_char() function.
db<>fiddle
The valid date elements are also in the documentation. You should only convert to a string for display though; while you are manipulating or storing it you should treat it as a date.
How can I filter last 3 months with it?
You need to use Oracle syntax, not SQL Server or other syntax. You also can't refer to a column alias in the same level of query. SO you can recalculate the date value; or as your string format is relatively sane you can convert the target date to a string and compare that, which might allow an index to be used. Something like:
SELECT TO_DATE(at.textDate, 'YYYY_MM') as DataFormat
FROM tableName at
WHERE at.textDate >= TO_CHAR(ADD_MONTHS(TRUNC(SYSDATE, 'MM'), -3), 'YYYY_MM')
db<>fiddle
TO_DATE with appropriate format mask.
Just to know what's what:
SQL> alter session set nls_date_format = 'dd.mm.yyyy hh24:mi:ss';
Session altered.
Code:
SQL> select to_date('2021-01', 'yyyy_mm') from dual;
TO_DATE('2021-01','
-------------------
01.01.2021 00:00:00
SQL>

Convert date to month year format and pass it in the query

I have a BIRT report where user will be entering the dates in dd-mm-yyyy format however I need to convert dd-mm-yyyy to MON-YYYY format.
I have tried to use VARCHAR_FORMAT(FIELDNAME,'MON-YYYY') however it doesn't work.
select …….
where VARCHAR_FORMAT(fieldname,'MON-YYYY') = '2017-05-15';
User would end the date as
15/05/2017
The value present in the database for this field is 2017-05-15 07:30:00.0
update
Apparently the column is not a string but a datetime which means the conversion is only
to_date(fieldname, 'MON-YYYY')
But if the column is used in a Where clause it shouldn’t be converted at all.
——
Use to_date and to_char to first convert your string to a date and then back to a string with the right format
to_char(to_date(fieldname, 'DD-MM-YYYY'), 'MON-YYYY')
select *
from table (values
timestamp('2017-05-15-07.30.00')
) t(fieldname)
where
fieldname between to_date('15/05/2017', 'DD/MM/YYYY') and to_date('15/05/2017', 'DD/MM/YYYY') + 1 day
--date(fieldname) = to_date('15/05/2017', 'DD/MM/YYYY')
;
You may run it as is.
Both cases work, but to use the 2-nd one efficiently, you must create an index by the date(fieldname) expression (since db2 10.5) or add generated always column to the table with the same expression and index on it.

To get all the dates in a format dd/mm/yyyy. I have a date field in the format yyyymmdd

In my DB, there is a date field in the format yyyymmdd.
I have to get all the dates in the format dd-mm-yyyy for that particlar date.
ex:
Date
20170130
20170228
20170325
for the above dates, I need the output in the below format with the dates and day of the particular dates
date day
30-01-2017 tuesday
28-02-2017 tuesday
25-03-2017 saturday
If the column is a string, then it can hold invalid date values such as February 31, one way to avoid this is by a small function such as this:
create or replace
function my_to_date( p_str in varchar2 ) return date
is
begin
return to_date( p_str );
exception
when others then
return null;
end;
\\
select to_char(my_to_date('20170231'),'DD-MM-YYYY Day')
from dual
\\
Demo
Try below:
Select to_char(yrdate, 'dd-mm-yyyy'), to_char(yrdate, 'D') from yrtable
It sounds like your dates aren't actually DATE fields but some kind of CHAR field? The best option would be to convert to DATE and then convert back to CHAR:
SELECT TO_CHAR(TO_DATE(mydate, 'YYYYMMDD'), 'DD-MM-YYYY Day')
FROM mytable;
This uses the YYYYMMDD mask to convert your string into a date, then uses the mask DD-MM-YYYY Day to convert it back into a string. Use day if you want the day name in lowercase (as in your OP).
#user2778168 answer will give you the results you want. But why?
Your database does not have dates stored in yyyymmdd format or any other date format for at mater, unless it's defined with a character type definition. Oracle stores all dates in a single internal structure, and with only slight variations timestamps are the same. The format used only tells Oracle how to display the value or to convert a string to a date. Unless a specific format is specified Oracle uses the NLS_DATE_FORMAT for this determination. See here and scan down to "Datetime Format Models" for format specifications.
To see this run the following:
select value
from nls_session_parameters
where parameter = 'NLS_DATE_FORMAT';
Select yrdate default_format
, to_char(yrdate, 'dd-mm-yyyy') specified_format
, dump(yrdate) unformated
from yrtable;
alter session set nls_date_format = 'Month dd,yyyy';
Rerun the above queries.
It seems you hold date column(date1) in character format. Suppose you have a table named days:
SQL> desc days
date1 varchar2(10)
then,
we should convert it into date, and then into char format, with aliases in quotation marks to provide lowercase aliases as you wanted.
perhaps your database's date language is non-english like mine(turkish), then you need to convert it to english.
lastly, it'a appropriate to order the results according to converted date, seen from your output. So we can use the following SQL :
select to_char(to_date(date1,'yyyymmdd'),'dd-mm-yyyy') "date",
to_char(to_date(date1,'yyyymmdd'),'day','nls_date_language=english') "day"
from days
order by to_date(date1,'yyyymmdd');
D e m o

How do I display DATE in 'DD MON YYYY' format?

I am a newbie for Oracle database programming and I wish to INSERT date (also display) in 'DD MON YYYY' format. (PS: This only involves INSERT event). Which data type (DATE or TIMESTAMP) is the most suitable option for me in order to accomplish this format? How was I supposed to do that? Thanks.
A DATE column does not have any format.
So the format that you use when inserting or updating data is irrelevant for displaying that data (that's one of the reasons why you should never store a date in a VARCHAR column).
Any formatted output you see for a DATE column in your SQL tool (e.g. SQL*Plus) is applied by that tool. It is not part of the data stored in that column.
When providing a date literal you should either use the to_date() function with an explicit format mask:
insert into some_table (some_date_column)
values (to_date('27-06-2014', 'dd-mm-yyyy'));
I also do not recommend using formats with written month names (27-JUN-2014) when supplying a date literal because they also depend on the NLS settings of the client computer and might produce (random) errors due to different languages. Using numbers only is much more robust.
I prefer to use ANSI date literals because it's a bit less typing:
insert into some_table (some_date_column)
values (DATE '2014-06-27');
The format for an ANSI date (or timestamp) literal is always the ISO format (yyyy-mm-dd).
When you select your data you can display the date in whatever format you like. Either by using the to_char() function (e.g. when using a SQL tool) or using functions from your programming language (the preferred way to use inside an application):
select to_char(some_date_column,'dd-mon-yyyy')
from some_table;
Note that the DATE data type in Oracle (despite it's name) also stores the time. a TIMESTAMP does the same thing only with a higher precision (it includes milliseconds, whereas the DATE data type only stores seconds).
To insert a record,
INSERT INTO TABLE_NAME (DATE_FIELD) VALUES (TO_DATE ('27-JUN-2014', 'DD-MON-YYYY');
It is advisable to use DATE data-type until and unless you need the date's accuracy to be till milli seconds. In your case, go with DATE datatype and TIMESTAMP is not necessary
To select a record,
SELECT TO_CHAR(DATE_FIELD, 'DD-MON-YYYY') FROM TABLE_NAME;
In genral, remember this:
TO_DATE is a function used to convert a string(CHAR) TO DATE
TO_CHAR is a function used to convert a DATE to a string(CHAR)
In this scenario date datatype will be suitable for you, and for the desired format you should try like this:-
INSERT INTO TABLE_NAME(DATE_COLUMN) VALUES('27-JUN-2014');
Hope this can help you.

creating table in Oracle with Date

I want to create a table in Oracle 10g and I want to specify the date format for my date column. If I use the below syntax:
create table datetest(
........
startdate date);
Then the date column will accept the date format DD-MON-YY which I dont want.
I want the syntax for my date column to be MM-DD-YYYY
Please let me know how to proceed with this.
Regards,
A DATE has no inherent format. It is not simply a string that happens to represent a date. Oracle has its own internal format for storing date values.
Formats come into play when actual date values need to be converted into strings or vice versa, which of course happens a lot since interactively we write dates out as strings.
The default date format for your database is determined by the settings NLS_DATE_FORMAT, which you probably have set to DD-MON-YYYY (which I believe is the default setting for American English locales). You can change this at the database level or for a single session for convenience, but in general it is safer programming practice to be explicit so that you don't get errors or, worse, wrong results if your code is run in a different environment.
The simplest way to specify a date value unambiguously is a date literal, which is the word 'date' followed by a string representing the date in YYYY-MM-DD format, e.g. date '2012-11-13'. The Oracle parser directly translates this into the corresponding internal date value.
If you want to use a different format, then I recommend explicitly using TO_CHAR/TO_DATE with your desired format model in your code. Examples:
INSERT INTO my_table (my_date) VALUES ( TO_DATE( '11-13-2012', 'MM-DD-YYYY' ) );
SELECT TO_CHAR( my_date, 'MM-DD-YYYY' ) FROM my_table;
dates rdo not have a format like you're suggesting. they are stored internally as a 7 byte number. to format the date when selecting, please use TO_CHAR(yourdatefield, 'format')
where formats are all shown here: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/sql_elements004.htm#i34924
eg to_char(startdate, 'mm-dd-yyyy')