Date field in a view need to be formatted

Question

I have a view like this
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW order_view AS
SELECT company_id company_id,
branch_id branch_id,
Branch_API.Get_Description(company_id, branch_id) branch_description,
order_id order_id,
order_date order_date,
comments comments,
currency_code currency_code,
Currency_API.Get_Description(company_id,currency_code) currency_description,
exchange_rate exchange_rate,
emp_id emp_id,
Employee_API.Get_F_Name(company_id, emp_id) first_name,
Employee_API.Get_L_Name(company_id, emp_id) last_name,
voucher_id voucher_id,
substrb(Payment_Type_API.Decode(payment_type),1,200) payment_type,
payment_type payment_type_db,
rowstate state
FROM order_tab
WITH read only;
This view return the order date like this '10/23/2005 4:30:30 PM'. But I want to get it like this 2005-10-23-16.30.30. Aslo is shoud be a date to be return. So I can't use to_char(order_date, 'YYYY-MM-DD-HH24.MI.SS') order date to do this.
Is there anyway to get this correct?
Thanks in advance..

Answer 1

SQL> create or replace view test_data as
  2  select to_char(sysdate, 'yyyy/dd/mm hh:mi:ss')    date_val
  3    from dual
  4  /
View created.
SQL>
SQL> desc test_data
Name                                      Null?    Type
DATE_VAL                                           VARCHAR2(19)
SQL>
SQL> create or replace view test_data as
  2  select to_date(to_char(sysdate, 'yyyy/dd/mm hh:mi:ss'), 'yyyy/dd/mm hh:mi:ss') date_Val
  3    from dual
  4  /
View created.
SQL>
SQL> desc test_data
Name                                      Null?    Type
DATE_VAL                                           DATE
SQL> select date_val from test_data;
DATE_VAL
24-OCT-05
SQL> alter session set nls_Date_Format='yyyy/dd/mm hh:mi:ss';
Session altered.
SQL> select date_val from test_data;
DATE_VAL
2005/24/10 04:53:46i asked you to use TO_DATE becuase you wanted the data type to be DATE instead of varchar.
but the final output how you want to retrive has to be extracted again using the TO_CHAR in your application.
Infact if you don't require a conversion. if the field is date already, it will be date when you create the view. only when you want to select it use TO_CHAR and extract in the desired format.
eg. also show how to see the date in diff,. format in your sql*plus session.