uisng to_date function still get date format picture ends before converting entire input string error - sql

Question

I have the following code where I want to see if a date is less than a year ago:
select id
from mytable
where id= :p_id
and (to_date(trunc(sysdate), 'yyyy-mm-dd') - to_date(datewhen, 'yyyy-mm-dd')) < 365;
I keep getting the error:
ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input
string
Looking at other question with the same error on StackOverflow I see the solution usually is to use the to_date function which I am doing so I am unsure why this is occuring. The datewhen field is of type Date.

Answer 1

Do not use to_date() with the columnes of DATE data type. to_date() converts character string to a value of DATE data type. It makes no sense to convert the DATE to DATE. In a first step datewhen column of type DATE will be implicitly converted into a character data type by using the default date format (that's most probably not 'yyyy-mm-dd') and this is the culprit of the ORA-01830 error.
So your statement should look something like this:
select id from mytable where id = :p_id and (trunc(sysdate) - trunc(datewhen)) < 365;
I'd calculate the difference in the months or years instead of days:
... where months_between(sysdate, datewhen) < 12

Answer 2

If your datewhen column is char/varchar formatted as yyyy-mm-dd then you have to do the to_date conversion on datewhen, but not on SYSDATE: it's already a date and doesn't need to be converted.
To filter on a date within the past 365 days, compare it to SYSDATE - 365:
select id
from mytable
where id = :p_id
and to_date(datewhen, 'yyyy-mm-dd') > sysdate - 365;
But a year isn't always 365 days: on leap years it's 366 days. To get a one year ago value that's always correct, subtract an interval of one year from the current date:
select id
from mytable
where id = :p_id
and datewhen > sysdate - interval '1' year;
One more thing: the Oracle DATE type isn't just a date; it's a date and a time. SYSDATE returns the current date and time. Try this query:
select to_char(sysdate, 'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') from dual;
Unless you run this at exactly midnight you'll see a time component as well.
Say your query runs on 2 September 2017 at 10 AM and you're looking for a date within the past year. You'd expect to get the date 3 September 2016, but you wouldn't because at 10 AM SYSDATE is 3 September 2016 at 10:00:00. That's greater than the plain date 3 September 2016, which is 3 September 2016 at 0:00:00, so records with a datewhen of `2016-09-03' won't be included.
To ignore the time component of an Oracle DATE value, use TRUNC. Your final query should look something like this:
select id
from mytable
where id = :p_id
and datewhen > trunc(sysdate) - interval '1' year;

Answer 3

you use TO_DATE function when the value in character format
Syntax
The syntax for the TO_DATE function in Oracle/PLSQL is:
TO_DATE( string1 [, format_mask] [, nls_language] )