This blog was originally published on 24 November, 2017.
Developers are working with DATE or TIMESTAMP data types more or less all the time; they’re being used in allmost all APEX applications. This posting contains some information about the differences between DATE and TIMESTAMP and about format masks and how they work in Application Express.
DATE or TIMESTAMP?
Actually, there is not one, not two but four data types for datetime values in the Oracle database:
- DATE is the oldest and most widely used data type. Though the name is “DATE”, it stores also information about the time. Internally, DATE stores year, month, day, hour, minute and second as explicit values. To get the current timestamp as an instance of DATE, use the SYSDATE SQL function.
SQL> alter session set nls_date_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS'; Session altered. SQL> select sysdate, dump(sysdate) as date_bytes from dual; SYSDATE DATE_BYTES -------------------- ----------------------------------- 2017-11-23 23:41:08 Typ=13 Len=8: 225,7,11,23,23,41,8,0
- TIMESTAMP extends DATE by fractional seconds. Internally, time zone information is also contained, but in order to work with time zones, one of the other two data types, TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE or TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE must be used. To get the current timestamp as a TIMESTAMP instance, use the LOCALTIMESTAMP SQL function. As the DUMP result below shows, TIMESTAMP stores year, month, day, hour, minute and second similar to DATE. The other bytes are there for fractional seconds and time zone information. TIMESTAMP instances consume more space on disk than DATE instances, which is natural – they contain more information.
SQL> alter session set nls_timestamp_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6'; Session altered. SQL> select localtimestamp, dump(localtimestamp) ts_bytes from dual; LOCALTIMESTAMP TS_BYTES --------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017-11-24 08:45:41.434175 Typ=187 Len=20: 225,7,11,24,8,45,41,0,24,252,224,25,1,0,3,0,127,1,0,0
- TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE allows to explicitly work with time zone information. A time zone can be used to create a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE instance and it is explicitly contained in the output (use the right format mask). When the output of a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE value does not contain a time zone, you have incomplete data.
Oracle does not implicitly convert instances of this data type between time zones; this can be done explicitly with the AT TIME ZONE clause. To get the current time as a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE instance, we can use two functions: SYSTIMESTAMP returns the current time in the database time zone and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns it in the current session time zone. The following example uses SYSTIMESTAMP.SQL> alter session set nls_timestamp_tz_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6 TZR'; Session altered. SQL> select systimestamp as ts_bytes from dual; SYSTIMESTAMP ---------------------------------- 2017-11-23 23:57:04.609608 -08:00
- TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE does not expose the time zone information (to the application, it looks like a TIMESTAMP), but it uses tome zones implicitly: An instance is created without time zone information, the session time zone is assumed. Stored instances are normalized to the database time zone. When the data is retrieved, users see it (again) in the session time zone.
The following example illustrates how TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE works: First, a table is created. Then the current time is retrieved and stored into the table ( SYSTIMESTAMP returns TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, but this is automatically converted to TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE ). When the table is then being selected, the returned data changes with the session time zone.SQL> create table mytimestamps( ts timestamp with local time zone ); Table created. SQL> insert into mytimestamps values ( systimestamp ); 1 row created. SQL> alter session set time_zone='Europe/Berlin'; Session altered. SQL> select * from mytimestamps; TS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017-11-24 12:55:39.761283 SQL> alter session set time_zone='EST'; Session altered. SQL> select * from mytimestamps; TS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017-11-24 06:55:39.761283
Format Masks
Whether we work within an application or a tool like SQL Plus or SQL Developer; whenever we output a DATE or TIMESTAMP instance, we’re converting it to VARCHAR2. We can do this explicitly using TO_CHAR or Oracle will do it implcitly. And now NLS format masks kick in – the format mask decides how a DATE is converted to a VARCHAR2 and back. The are defaults for NLS format masks at the database level, we can set them at the session level or we can pass a format mask to the individual TO_CHAR call.