How to convert PDT into a date time object in Oracle sql?

Question

If I have dates that are in this format: Sep-29-07 13:45:00 PDT

How would I convert this into a Date object in oracle 11g? I have tried this:

SELECT TO_DATE(PublishDate, 'MON-DD-YY HH24:MI:SS')
FROM Order;

But I am getting an error saying:

ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string

Answer 1

If you have only one time zone's dates, you can just ignore the timezone part using:

select to_date(PublishDate, 'MON-DD-YY HH24:MI:SS "PDT"') 
from Orders;

If you plan to support multiple timezones, then store them with timestamp with time zone format. use correct timezone abbreviation (PST instead of PDT - See this ) and convert the string, use to_timestamp_tz .

select to_timestamp_tz(PublishDate, 'MON-DD-YY HH24:MI:SS TZR') 
from Orders;

or perhaps, convert them in one local time zone. See this answer for that

Answer 2

You can ignore the timezone by using:

SELECT TO_DATE(SUBSTR(PublishDate, 1, length(PublishDate) - 4), 'MON-DD-YY HH24:MI:SS')

However, if you want to handle different timezones, you need to store the standard format, something like 'America/Los_Angeles' .

For example:

SELECT TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ(PublishDate, 'MON-DD-YY HH24:MI:SS TZR')
from (select 'Sep-29-07 13:45:00 America/Los_Angeles' as PublishDate from dual) x;

You can this modify this with 'PDT' , but that is not acceptable by itself.