to_date problems

Hello, I am quite new to SQL and am having some problems. I have populated a table with info as well including the date and time... though when I go to search for the date and time... I only seem to be able to access the date! Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Below is what I have done:

I created table1 as such -

CREATE TABLE table1(
person INTEGER
,whn DATE
,code VARCHAR(10)
,PRIMARY KEY (person,whn)
);

And populated the table with -

INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (1,TO_DATE('25 Feb 2003 06:10:00','dd Mon YYYY HH24:MI:SS'),'XE 0A DB');

---- though when attempting -

SELECT whn FROM table1

I only get back the date ---- 25-FEB-03?!?

Thank you for any reply!

Regards,
Poot.

Is this what you want...

Code:

---

SQL>SELECT to_char(sysdate,'dd Mon YYYY HH24:MI:SS') from dual;

TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'DDM
--------------------
19 Mar 2003 15:46:17

---

alternatively you can ...

alter session set nls_date_format='dd Mon YYYY HH24:MI:SS';

... which will change your session default date format.

Hello, thank you for your replies.

I think I see where you are going, but I actually want to put the time in manually rather than the system clock - and having done this I am finding it hard to retrieve...

any ideas...

Regards again... and thank you for any reply

Poot

Hi poot,

Populating the column with data as you did in your first post INSERT is spot on.

Oracle stores both date and time in a DATE column
..... BUT .....
(by default) it only displays the date in a SELECT unless you tell it to do otherwise. Which is what jovery & slimdave are saying (the use of sysdate & dual was just for an example - you should replace them with "whn" and "table1" - without the "").

Thnx for the last post. I see whats what now! I think I really need to get a large book though as I have many more daft questions that need answering!

Thank you all for your time though.

Regards,
Poot.