Oracle: Convert Date Time to Specific format

Question

Good afternoon almighty Stackoverflow!

I'm not overly familiar with SQL in Oracle, but have a need to take a date/time value and convert it to a string that matches a specific format for another application. I found a lot of scenarios that were similar, but those mixed with some Oracle documentation has not gotten me to what I need yet.

The input format is as follows: 8/6/2014 3:05:21 PM

The format that I need to be input into the other application is as follows: YYYYMMDDhhmmssuu

uu is microseconds (fractional seconds in Oracle I guess).

What I thought would work would be:

to_date(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF') 

I think that only works if the input format matches the output format.

If you can provide assistance, I would greatly appreciate it!

Answer 1

If You convert from DATE type to output format use TO_CHAR function:

TO_CHAR(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF')

If You convert from VARCHAR2 type, then use both functions:

TO_CHAR(TO_DATE(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT, 'MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS'),'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF')

TO_DATE - converts from VARCHAR2 type (input format) to DATE type; TO_CHAR - from DATE type to VARCHAR2 type (output format)

Answer 2

从dual中选择to_char（systimestamp，'yyyymmddhh24missFF'）;

Answer 3

The Oracle function you need is TO_CHAR.

to_char(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF')

Answer 4

since your format is looking for a string variable I am unsure if it will take a to_date.

My advice would be experimenting with combining both the to_char() and to_date() functions

to_char(to_date(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT,'DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS),'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF')

or

to_date(to_char(VP_ACTUAL_RPT_DETAILS.ETLLOADER_OUT,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISSFF'),''DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS')

are functions I would try. Oracle can be very picky about inputs with dates/strings, I am relatively new to Oracle as well and times/dates are often frustrating