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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re: sql query
It's because Oracle dates are stored as a real number, where the integer
portion represents the date and the decimal portion represents the time.
This means you can do date arithmetic simply by adding or subtracting numbers to
a date, where 1.0 = one day, 2.0 = two days, etc.
This means that, as far as fractions of a day are concerned, 0.5 = half a
day = 12 hours, 1/24 = one hour, 1/(24 * 60) = 1 minute and 1/(24 * 3600) = 1
second. In your example, 5/(24*3600) = 5 seconds that are being subtracted
from the current date/time.
(This representation is really handy - to convert a date/time to just a
date (no time portion), you just have to TRUNC() the date.)
-a>>> ravindra_at_sentica.com 3/4/2001 14:00:20
>>>This message has been scanned by
MAILSweeper.************************************************************Ifound a query to get the time 5 seconds less than the current time asselect to_char(sysdate-5/(24*3600),'dd-mon-yyyy hh24:mi:ss') from dual;I am really not sure as to why 24*3600 is used for.Can anyone tell me why it is used.ThanksRavindra-- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: <A
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