RE: internal date value

From: Droogendyk, Harry <Harry.Droogendyk_at_cibc.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:34:42 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005DDFF9.20040123123442@fatcity.com>

Thomas:

I'm aware of the to_char function and the various options. However as you alluded to, that lands in SAS as a character literal, e.g. '22/01/2004' requiring me to convert it to internal format before I can use it in SAS.

I think I have to use my work around:

select date_fld - to_date('01Jan1960','ddmonyyyy') as sas_date

Thanks for your time and help.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: January 23, 2004 3:32 PM
To: 'ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com'
Cc: Droogendyk, Harry

Harry,

Look at the to_char function in Oracle. It will convert a date field to *any* format you want.

for example:

select to_char(date_field,'mm/dd/yyyy hh24miss') will return a date in the format as noted. You have about as many options as you probably need. You can combine as many format and functions as you think you need.

to_char translates dates to chars and to_date does the opposite - but both use the same format statements.

This should work fine for you.

And for you info - Oracle dates are stored internally based on a date going back many centuries - not just to 1968!

Good Luck

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 3:09 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Thomas:

I'm a SAS guy who must pull Oracle data from the back-end DB.

SAS stores dates internally as elapsed days since Jan 1, 1960. If I request an Oracle date field, SAS creates a datetime variable, number of seconds since midnight Jan 1, 1960. Rather than use SAS functions to extract the date ( e.g. datepart function ), I'd like to push that back to Oracle if possible and create a simple date field on SAS. I can accomplish the desired effect with:

select date_fld - to_date('01Jan1960','ddmonyyyy') as sas_date

but I was hoping there was an Oracle function to surface the internal value ( appears to be days since Jan 1, 1968 ). Presumably such a function would be more efficient.

Thanks for your help.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: January 23, 2004 2:50 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Harry,

Can you explain why you need to raw internal value? Just curious.

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 1:40 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

You gather it wrong :)
Oracle stores date in 8 bytes, one for each: year, month, day, hour, min, ... etc.

Igor Neyman, OCP DBA
ineyman_at_perceptron.com

-----Original Message-----
Droogendyk, Harry
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 12:40 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Folks:

>From what I gather, Oracle stores dates as the number of elapsed days since
Jan 1, 1968. When I query a column of type 'DATE', it returns me the default format, dd-mon-yy. I know I can use to_char(date_col,'YYYYMMDD')
etc... to define many output formats.

What can I do to get the raw internal value of the date? i.e. today is 13172.

Thanks.
--

Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
--

Author: Droogendyk, Harry
INET: Harry.Droogendyk_at_cibc.com

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------

To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).

--

Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
--

Author: Igor Neyman
INET: ineyman_at_perceptron.com

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------