Problem with CASE and DATEs in sql

Question

Hi to everybody
I have this table
SQL> desc borrar
Name Null? Type
NUMERO FLOAT(126)
NUMERO2 NUMBER(2)
FECHA1 DATE
NUMEROREAL NUMBER(10,3)
CADENA VARCHAR2(100)
CADENAN NVARCHAR2(10)
and when I execute the next sentence appear
SQL> select 1,
case when sysdate <= FECHA1 then
fecha1
else
to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy')
end reconDia
from borrar;
to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy')
ERROR at line 4:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes
but If I write ...
select 1,
case when sysdate <= FECHA1 then
to_date(to_char(fecha1,'ddmmyyyy'), 'ddmmyyyy')
else
to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy')
end reconDia
from borrar
is ok ...
does somebody know if it is a bug or Im doing something wrong ?
Thank you in advance
Hernan

Answer 1

The query works correctly in 9i, but apparently you are running on 8i. Adding a CAST statement in 8i is another way to get the query to work:
sql>select 1,
  2         case when sysdate <= fecha1 then fecha1
  3         else to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy')
  4         end recondia
  5    from borrar;
       else to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy')
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes
sql>select 1,
  2         case when sysdate <= fecha1 then fecha1
  3         else cast(to_date('02012000','ddmmyyyy') as date)
  4         end recondia
  5    from borrar;
        1 RECONDIA
        1 07/30/2003 09:44:14am
        1 01/02/2000 12:00:00am
        1 01/02/2000 12:00:00am
3 rows selected.