20 Jun 2017 Aldo Zelen Useful SQL Patterns: Date Generator As you start coding in SQL, you will use some statements and techniques over and over again. We call these “SQL patterns”. This series will look at the most common SQL patterns and consider how to use them. SQL patterns, such as the pivot pattern we discussed last week, can save you a lot of time and effort. Suppose you are asked to get a range of days in a financial quarter, but the only records you have are for the start and end dates of each quarter. Read more 24 Jan 2017 Maria Alcaraz Performing Calculations on Date- and Time-Related Values Relational databases support several date and time data types. In this article, we'll look at several arithmetic operations we can do on these types. These operations are logical and understandable, even for the beginning SQL coder. Let's first briefly explain the main data types used for dates and times. Keep in mind that data types may differ by database engine, so check your database documentation for specifics before you start working with them. Read more 21 Oct 2014 Patrycja Dybka The Most Useful Date and Time Functions Date and time functions and formats are quite different in various databases. In this article, let's review the most common functions that manipulates dates in an Oracle database. The function SYSDATE() returns a 7 byte binary data element whose bytes represents: century, year, month, day, hour, minute, second It's important to know that select sysdate from dual in SQL*Plus gives the same result as select to_char(sysdate) from dual because SQL*Plus binds everything into character strings so it can print it. Read more