Oracle timestamp to unix timestamp

Question

Hi everyone!
I need to convert a values fetched from a db table in a unix timestamp (seconds passed by january first 1970).
The table is like this
create table test(.... ts timestamp not null...);
and the code to define the output variable (for a select statement) is the following, where time is an OCIDateTime variable
OCIDefineByPos(stmth, &defineh, errh, pos, (dvoid *) time, 0, SQLT_ODT,
(dvoid *) 0, (ub2 *) 0, (ub2 *) 0, OCI_DEFAULT);
once I have initialized "time", how can I convert his content to unix timestamp?
And viceversa, how can I put an int value rapresenting a unix timestamp in an OCIDateTime variable, and then insert it correctly inside mt table?
thank you!
GePs

Answer 1

I define my buffer according on the the table's field width I retrieve from metadata. In ths way:
OCIAttrGet((dvoid *) pars, (ub4) OCI_DTYPE_PARAM, (dvoid *) col_width, (ub4 *) 0,
(ub4) OCI_ATTR_DATA_SIZE, (OCIError *) err);
Now in col_width there's the dimension of the field (for a timestamp field is 11!). Then I bind the correct variable in the correct manner (with a varchar2 fiedl it works!)
int pos = 1;
char *time;
time = malloc(sizeof(char*));
OCIDefineByPos(stmt, defs, err, (ub4) pos, time, (sword) col_width+ 1, SQLT_STR, (dvoid *) 0,
                              (ub2 *)0, (ub2 *)0, OCI_DEFAULT);
Now if I print time I get the trunked timestamp
printf("%s", time); //-> 11-NOV-05 1