I have a date (stored as a VARCHAR2) in a database with the format:
20090123_163842.865
yyyyMMdd_hhmmss.ttt
and I want to make a SQL sentence to obtain:
23/01/2009 16:38:42,865
dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss,ttt
MY objective is to add it manually (I know that data can be exported from database, and imported into Excel, but I want to do it manually) to Excel as a recognizable Date.
How should my SQL sentence be?
I have tried to to it by:
select TO_TIMESTAMP(my_time_utc, 'YYYYMMDD_HH24MISS.FF3') from myTable
but I am only able to obtain:
2009-01-23 16:38:42.865
Thanks
It never ceases to amaze me how many people confuse these operations.
First you need to convert the varchar 'fake date' to a real date: use to_date for this.
Then you need to convert the date to a varchar for presentation: use to_char for this.
select to_char(to_date(column, 'yyyyMMdd_hhmmss.ttt'), 'dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss,ttt')
from your_table;
should do what you want.
When oracle retrieve a date field from database and show it to you a cast implicit conversion is made. The format pattern for this conversion is set in oracle configuration. Quoting oracle doc:
The default date format for an Oracle date value is derived from the
NLS_DATE_FORMAT and NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE initialization parameters
If you perform query from Excel, your actual query is enougth because excel know date format and is able to read from Oracle with out problems.
If you do a copy-paste from your screen results to excel, then you should cast back date to varchar with your desired format or, of course, change oracle configuration to match your locales.
Related
I have a date format 2011-01-06T06:30:10Z in Excel.I want to just load the date part into a table from excel.How do I get the date part from it.
i.e. 2011-01-06
Thanks
Try this:
select cast(TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ(REPLACE('2011-01-06T06:30:10Z', 'T', ''), 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS TZH:TZM') as date) from dual
I think, some more explanation is needed.
Loading data into database is one part, and displaying it after fetching is another part.
If you have loaded the data into database, then all you need to do is use TRUNC. It will truncate the time portion and will display only the date portion.
A DATE always has a datetime part together. TIMESTAMP is an extension to the DATE type. And what you see the date looks like is not the way it is stored in database. The format is for we human beings to understand. A date is stored in 7 byte in internal format.
More information Based on OP's question via comments
NEVER store a DATE as VARCHAR2 datatype. A date is not a string literal. Oracle provides lot of FORMAT MODELS to display the datetime the way you want. Sooner or later, you will run into performance issues due to data conversion. Always use explicit conversion to convert a literal to a perfect DATE to compare it with other date value.
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.
I have a character field that stamps in the order of MMDDYYHHMMSS (note: not a date but character field). I am wanting to kick this out to a date field in my SQL into this format dd.mm.yyyy. hh24:mi.
My problem is that the sql kicks it out to YYYY-MM-DD field without the time. This section of the sql looks like this:
TO_DATE(SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,3,2)||'.'||SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,1,2)
||'.'||'20'||SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,5,2)||'.'||SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,7,2)
||':'||SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,9,2)||':'||SUBSTR(MOPACTIVITY.MOPID,11,2)
, 'dd.mm.yyyy. hh24:mi:ss') "XXX",
Any thoughs on how to get the time to convert too?
No need for such a complicated expression:
to_date(MOPID, 'MMDDYYHH24MISS')
will convert the column to a real DATE column assuming the time part is in 24 hour format (00-23, not 00-12). And this will also fail if you don't really have valid dates in the varchar column.
this out to a date field in my SQL into this format
A DATE column does not have "a format"!
The format is only applied when you display it.
In case you mean you want to convert the varchar stored in your column into another varchar that has a different date formatting, the easiest is probably to simply convert the above expression back to a varchar:
to_char(to_date(MOPID, 'MMDDYYHH24MISS'), 'dd.mm.yyyy. hh24:mi')
Before applying something like that, allow me one comment:
Store dates in DATE columns, never ever store them in a VARCHAR column.
If you had done that from the beginning, all you would have to do know is to simply apply a single to_char() to your DATE column to get the display format you want.
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')
I have to run column checks for data consistency and the only thing that is throwing off my code is checking for character lengths for dates between certain parameters.
SEL
sum(case when ( A.date is null or (character_length(A.date) >8)) then 1 else 0 end ) as Date
from
table A
;
The date format of the column is YYYY-MM-DD, and the type is DA. When I run the script in SQL Assistant, I get an error 3580 "Illegal use of CHARACTERS, MCHARACTERS, or OCTET_LENGTH functions."
Preliminary research suggests that SQL Assistant has issues with the character_length function, but I don't know how to adjust the code to make it run.
with chareter length are you trying to get the memory used? Becuase if so that is constant for a date field. If you are trying to get the length of the string representation i think LENGTH(A.date) will suffice. Unfortanatly since teradata will pad zeros on conversions to string, I think this might always return 10.
UPDATE :
Okay so if you want a date in a special 'form' when you output it you need to select it properly. In teradata as with most DBs Date are not store in strings, but rather as ints, counting days from a given 'epoch' date for the database (for example the epoch might be 01/01/0000). Each date type in teradata has a format parameter, which places in the record header instructions on how to format the output on select. By default a date format is set to this DATE FROMAT 'MM/DD/YYYY' I believe. You can change that by casting.
Try SELECT cast(cast(A.date as DATE FORMAT 'MM-DD-YYYY') as CHAR(10)) FROM A. and see what happens. There should be no need to validate the form of the dates past a small sample to see if the format is correct. The second cast forces the database to perform the conversion and use the format header specified. Other wise what you might see is the database will pass the date in a date form to SQL Assitant and sql assitant will perform the conversion on the application level, using the format specified in its own setting rather then the one set in the database.