On Sep 9, 11:22 am, Javier Montani <jmont...@gmail.com> wrote: > Indexes can be created to any of them. > Using VARCHAR to store dates doesn,t have much sense since you wont be able > to do any dates calculation. > > 2010/9/9 swaroop gowda <swaroop.t...@gmail.com> > > >
Certainly date calculations can be made, presuming the to_date() function is used with the proper date mask. The reason some developers use VARCHAR2 as a date field (in my experience) is they don't want to write the extra code to handle exceptions or validate the date string format, thus any valid text string can be input as a date. This, of course, leads to inconsistent data in the varchar2 'date' column as a wide range of date formats can end up in that field. True, it makes little sense to store dates as strings (if for no other reason than that demonstrated in my prior post in this thread) but that doesn't stop some developers from doing it. David Fitzjarrell -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Oracle PL/SQL" group. To post to this group, send email to Oracle-PLSQL@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to oracle-plsql-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Oracle-PLSQL?hl=en
