Remove or Change seconds in Date field

Question

Hello All,
I have a field which is storing the start and end time. data type is date ( oracle 8.1.6). while the data is store into the table it is taking seconds also, but the requirement is to store only hours and minutes not seconds. for eg. if the time is '30/10/2007 10:30:59'. How to do this. ?
regards
Kris

Answer 1

but the requirement is to store only hours and minutes not secondsThis doesn't sound like a requirement for storing the data but rather for retrieving or displaying the data. While yo can store the date with '00' seconds it might be more flexible to store the data with seconds and convert it later when you retrieve the data. Either way you can use one of the following;
SQL> create table t as (
   select to_date('30/10/2007 10:30:59', 'DD/MM/YYYY HH:MI:SS') col1 from dual)
Table created.
SQL> select to_char(col1, 'DD/MM/YYYY HH:MI') || ':00' new_date
from t
NEW_DATE          
30/10/2007 10:30:00
1 row selected.
SQL> select trunc(col1, 'MI') new_date
from t
NEW_DATE          
30/10/2007 10:30:00
1 row selected.