Query Oracle DB for timestamps when you know milliseconds

Question

I'm currently getting the error:

java.sql.SQLException: ORA-01843: not a valid month

which I assume is to do with the way I am setting a timestamp...

So I have a query like this :

select * from A_TABLE where A_TIMESTAMP_COL < '1252944840000'

But it doesn't work...and I don't want to have to convert it to a date ideally. Is there some special syntax to tell Oracle that this is a timestamp?

Answer 1

I think you can cast the date column to a char and do something like:

select * from A_TABLE where to_char(A_TIMESTAMP_COL) < '1252944840000'

This should allow you to compare strings, not dates.

Answer 2

You can use the to_timestamp() function to convert your string into a timestamp value: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/functions201.htm#sthref2458

Answer 3

Use the java.sql convenience methods to take that milisecond time and turn it into a Date or Timestamp.

Answer 4

You can use this query:

SELECT * FROM A_TABLE WHERE TIMESTAMP < (SYSDATE - 10/1440)

Where (SYSDATE - 10/1440) means SYSDATE - 10 Minutes.

Also see some examples here.