Between and operator is not working

Question

Oracle 10g
Hi
SELECT to_char(reportingdatetime,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS'), code, description, details, processname, instanceid, order_number,upi,reference
FROM XXHDNL_INT_HUB_ERROR_DETAILS
where
to_char(reportingdatetime,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS') between '30-NOV-2010 06:00:00' and '01-DEC-2010 05:59:59'
and
CODE ='2M-4103'
I am using this query to get the error details but its not returning any row.
But when ran the query without "between and" i am getting the output of 30 Nov and 01 Dec records
Pls correct where i went wrong
Thanks & Regards
Srikkanth.M

Answer 1

1) You have a data model error. Dates really really ought to be stored as a DATE or a TIMESTAMP. Storing date data as a VARCHAR2 is going to cause a whole raft of problems down the line.
2) If ReportingDateTime is a VARCHAR2, it makes no sense to use TO_CHAR. It's already a string, no good can come from trying to convert it to a string. And you can introduce lots of fun bugs because the TO_CHAR call forces the string to be converted to a date using the session's NLS_DATE_FORMAT and then that date is converted back to a string. If the NLS_DATE_FORMAT for the session happens not to match the hard coded date format, you'll suddenly start getting errors.
3) Your example works because '29-NOV' comes before '30-DEC' alphabetically. But you would also return data for '29-Oct' and '29-Sept' which is almost certainly not what you want.
4) Until you correct the data model issue, you want
WHERE to_date( ReportingDateTime, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS' )
  BETWEEN to_date( '29-NOV-2010 06:00:00', 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS' )
      AND to_date( '30-DEC-2010 05:59:59', 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS' )5) If you are going to make the mistake of storing date date as a character string, it would make sense to at least choose a format that sorts the same alphabetically and chronologically (i.e. 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS'). Not that this would make #1 any less true. But it would at least reduce the possibility that someone incorrectly doing a string comparison would at least get the right results.
Justin