DATE type returned from function does not return the time component

Question

Hi,
I'm dealing with a strange problem. I have a PL/SQL function (running on Oracle 8.1.4.7) which returns a DATE value. Like we all know the DATE datatype includes a date component and a time component.
The function I used for testing is like this:
FUNCTION ReturnDate return Date is
dReturn Date;
Begin
select sysdate into dReturn from dual;
return dReturn;
end ReturnDate;
When I call this function from .NET using ODP.NET the date value I get does not have the time component included only the day-month-year components.
This is a code-snippet that calls the function :
command.CommandText="Schema.ReturnDate";
command.CommandType=CommandType.StoredProcedure;
command.Parameters.Add("Return_Value",
OracleDbType.Date,0,ParameterDirection.ReturnValue);
command.ExecuteNonQuery();
I use the OracleDbType.Date type which I think is the most logical choice, because the type in the Database is after all DATE.
However this does not include the time componet. But if I change the OracleDbType.Date to OracleDbType.TimeStamp I get the time component. I'm not happy with this "hack" because I'm not sure what will happen when we upgrade our version of the Database to Oracle 9i which uses the new TimeStamp datatype.
Is this a bug that the OracleDbType.Date does not include the time component??

Answer 1

How do you examine the output Date value?
If it is from the string, then the time components will
not show because the NLS_DATE format in the client
machine does not contain the time components.
In American, the Date format is 'DD-MON-RR' by default whereas, the TimeStamp format is 'DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM' by default.
Can you take a look at the time components from the OracleDate by accessing the time properties, eg. OracleDate.Hour, OracleDate.Minute..etc to see if the time values are there?
Thanks
Martha