Oracle SQL : timestamps in where clause

Question

I need to look up rows within a particular time frame.

select * 
from TableA 
where startdate >= '12-01-2012 21:24:00' 
  and startdate <= '12-01-2012 21:25:33'

I.e.: I need to look up rows with timestamp precision of SECONDS. How do I achieve this?

FYI: The startdate column is of type TIMESTAMP.

Answer 1

to_timestamp()

You need to use to_timestamp() to convert your string to a proper timestamp value:

to_timestamp('12-01-2012 21:24:00', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')

to_date()

If your column is of type DATE (which also supports seconds), you need to use to_date()

to_date('12-01-2012 21:24:00', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')

Example

To get this into a where condition use the following:

select * 
from TableA 
where startdate >= to_timestamp('12-01-2012 21:24:00', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')
  and startdate <= to_timestamp('12-01-2012 21:25:33', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')

Note

You never need to use to_timestamp() on a column that is of type timestamp.