How to parse the year from a date.

Question

Hi,
I have the following date format in database.
05-SEP-07
18-OCT-07
18-OCT-07
25-JUL-07
18-OCT-07
What I am trying to do is get only the full year from the date, example
2007
2008
2009
I tried to use extract function but that doesn't work due to ORA-01843: not a valid month.
Thanks in advance.
select extract(year from date '18-OCT-07') from dual;

Answer 1

OK. You got an error using date literal. Did you at least look in documentation on date literals? I guess not, otherwise you'd see that data literal synatx is DATE 'YYYY-MM-DD':
SQL> select extract(year from date '18-OCT-07') from dual;
select extract(year from date '18-OCT-07') from dual
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01843: not a valid month
SQL>
SQL> select extract(year from date '2007-10-18') from dual;
EXTRACT(YEARFROMDATE'2007-10-18')
                             2007
SQL> SY.
P.S. "I have the following date format in database" is completely wrong dates are always stored in one format - internal date format that stores year, month, day, hour, minute and second. When you select date using client tools like SQL*Plus, SQL Developer, Toad, etc. date is converted to string using either explicit or implicit format where you specify which parts of date you want to see.