[QUOTE]Originally posted by julian
...[SNIP]...
Notice the type for sysdate. It is 13, not 12. 13 is the external DATE datatype. External datatype 13 is an internal c-structure whose length varies depending on how the c-compiler represents the structure. Note that the "Len=" value is 8 and not 7. Type 13 is not a part of the published 3GL interfaces for Oracle and is used for date calculations mainly within PL/SQL operations.
That was allready (more or less) covered in the original thread. However, the question remains: for what purpose does Oracle need the eight byte in type 13? No matter how you play with dates, the DUMP() will allways display the eight byte as 0. So what is its purpose? Any clue?