[Sorted] ORA-01841 - date problem

Question

I must be doing something stupid here, but for the life of me, I can't work out what it is! I'm on 10.2.0.2
I have a partitioned table that has partitions named PART_<YYYYMMDD> (eg. PART_20070618) or PART_MAX (for the catchall partition).
I've written a query to try and find the partition that's greater than a specified date, so I can work out what partition to split in my partition upkeep procedure.
(This is the test version of the query - in the procedure the table_name and the date comparison will be variables)
    SELECT 'PART_'||to_char(MIN(TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd')), 'yyyymmdd')
    FROM   (select partition_name
            from   all_tab_partitions
            WHERE  table_name = UPPER('task_archive')
            AND    partition_name <> 'PART_MAX')
    WHERE   TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd') > trunc(to_date('20070618', 'yyyymmdd'))This gives the error: ORA-01841: (full) year must be between -4713 and +9999, and not be 0
However, taking off the last WHERE clause gives this:
    SELECT 'PART_'||to_char(MIN(TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd')), 'yyyymmdd')
    FROM   (select partition_name
            from   all_tab_partitions
            WHERE  table_name = UPPER('task_archive')
            AND    partition_name <> 'PART_MAX')
'PART_'||TO_CHAR(MIN(TO_DATE(SUBSTR(PARTITION_NAME,6),'YYYYMMDD')),'YYYYMMDD')
PART_20070604And the inner query gives this:
            select partition_name
            from   all_tab_partitions
            WHERE  table_name = UPPER('task_archive')
            AND    partition_name <> 'PART_MAX'
PARTITION_NAME
PART_20070604
PART_20070611
PART_20070618Can anyone spot what it is that I've done wrong, please?!

Answer 1

Heh, yes, I did rewrite the query due to receiving the error initially. I've gone down the same route as you and couldn't get it to work.
I've just pasted your query in and run it, and same error occurs. Then I thought perhaps it's a Toad-ism, somewhere, but sqlplus gives the same error:
SQL>     SELECT 'PART_'|| to_char(MIN( part_date ), 'yyyymmdd')
  2      FROM   (select partition_name, TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd') part_Date
  3              from   all_tab_partitions
  4              WHERE  table_name = UPPER('task_archive')
  5              AND    partition_name <> 'PART_MAX')
  6      WHERE   part_date > to_date('20070618', 'yyyymmdd')
  7 
SQL> /
    FROM   (select partition_name, TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd') part_Date
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-01841: (full) year must be between -4713 and +9999, and not be 0I'm pretty sure Oracle's rewriting the query somehow, but I'm not sure how to stop it, given that the materialize hint isn't working:
  1      SELECT 'PART_'|| to_char(MIN( part_date ), 'yyyymmdd')
  2      FROM   (select /*+ materialize */ partition_name, TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd')
  3              from   all_tab_partitions
  4              WHERE  table_name = UPPER('task_archive')
  5              AND    partition_name <> 'PART_MAX')
  6*     WHERE   part_date > to_date('20070618', 'yyyymmdd')
SQL> /
    FROM   (select /*+ materialize */ partition_name, TO_DATE(SUBSTR(partition_name, 6), 'yyyymmdd')
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-01841: (full) year must be between -4713 and +9999, and not be 0