Sysdate from oracle db in mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss format

Question

I am trying to get sysdate from oracle db in mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss format but the result it gives back is 00:00:00 for hh24:mi:ss.
code:
try
Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection( connStr, userName, passWord );
     PreparedStatement pstmtQuery = con.prepareStatement(" SELECT to_date(to_char(sysdate,'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss'), 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss') SYS_DATE FROM DUAL" );
     ResultSet rsQuery = pstmtQuery.executeQuery();
DateFormat localFormat1 = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss");
java.sql.Date date3 = null;
if(rsQuery.next())
date3 = rsQuery.getDate("SYS_DATE");
System.out.println("\ndatabase sysdate: " + localFormat1.format( date3 ));
catch (SQLException sqle)
sqle.printStackTrace();
catch (java.lang.Exception e)
e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 1

When you use the to_date function, the result you get back will be in the default date format as specified by the nls_date_format property. The data is stored properly (i.e., it includes the time values), but when it's displayed it's displayed in the standard format. So even if the datetime is 10/11/2001 10:12:35, the value that will be displayed when you select sysdate will be 11-OCT-01 if you're using the default date format of DD-MON-YY.
Are you sure that your statement is returning the desired string when you type it directly into SQL? If so, then I have to guess that your default date format is set up the way you want it when you go into SQL directly, but that a different default date format is used when you're executing the statement via jdbc.
I've never tried setting the default date format through jdbc, so I don't know if it will work, but the way to set the format is to alter the session:
alter session set nls_date_format = 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss';
HTH,
Rich