Harry This list is moving to freelists, but I'll assume you knew that. Actually the base value for the standard Oracle dates is Jan 1, 4712 BC. There is a Julian function that will return the number of days since the base. To return the Julian, select to_char(sysdate,'J') from dual; Also, Oracle9i has some new date types and you may find one that works better for your purposes: http://otn.oracle.com/products/oracle9i/daily/may02.html
Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 11:40 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Folks: >From what I gather, Oracle stores dates as the number of elapsed days since Jan 1, 1968. When I query a column of type 'DATE', it returns me the default format, dd-mon-yy. I know I can use to_char(date_col,'YYYYMMDD') etc... to define many output formats. What can I do to get the raw internal value of the date? i.e. today is 13172. Thanks. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Droogendyk, Harry INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).