Question

Number of days since a current date

Asked by: mwoolger

Is there a built in oracle function that will give the number of days since a certain (built in oracle) date? eg given 01/01/2000 it would return a number representing the number of days since 01/01/1900 the given date is.

I know that i can do it myself using
select (given date) - (a chosen base date)
from sys.dual;

But if there is a function it would be quicker than doing a repeated number of queries as i have a large data set.

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Asked On
2002-10-30 at 03:59:58ID20385985
Tags

days_between

,

oracle

,

date

,

since

Topic

Databases Miscellaneous

Participating Experts
3
Points
150
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: zsoltvinczePosted on 2002-10-30 at 04:17:54ID: 7387185

There is only a months_between function.  You can however create a function and use it for this purpose.

create function days_between (d1 date , d2 date) return number is

begin
return d1 - d2;
end;

now you can use the function as
select days_between(sysdate, sysdate - 5) from dual;
***********
SQL> create function days_between (d1 date , d2 date) return number is
  2  
  3  begin
  4  return d1 - d2;
  5  end;
  6  /

Function created.

SQL> select days_between(sysdate, sysdate - 5) from dual;

DAYS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE,SYSDATE-5)
-------------------------------
                              5

SQL>
SQL>

 

by: riazpkPosted on 2002-10-30 at 04:41:01ID: 7387240

Hi !

There is no such built-in function for this. You will have to do it urself.

Riaz

 

by: Woilco_ETLPosted on 2008-10-31 at 00:53:18ID: 22848149

Since there is a bug (since version 6 allready) in the julian date arithmetic in oracle, merely subtracting dates is not allways a good solution.
select to_date('01010001AD','DDMMYYYYBC','nls_date_language=AMERICAN') -to_date('31120001BC','DDMMYYYYBC','nls_date_language=AMERICAN')from dual; returns 367.
At first glance this would be correct, however the year 0 does not exist, therefore the correct answer should be 1.
Also since the (non-existing)year 0 is a millennium year, it should not be 366 days but 265 days, as leap years do not exist on millenium dates.

Following function can be used to calculate the days between to dates:

create or replace function days_between wrapped
a000000
b2
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
8
170 12c
N+bvQHKyBlSljERVNnueObHaGj4wg43Qr57WfHRAvzM+wF5YrJBLbQUOg0WUPJ5MAIoUy20f
CFELis2xMqzLn5PhqL06nRRCPmWVnvsuc3blExwso/6PQ8KPlK8YFdo2aZ6V/8dqW6FcPkTj
8bDD4ZhXPgBl7qam2Tgru2eU305oBGsujukW12jdbEZOCn+60lVpKoFNCuK5BRJV/ACLw8J0
mbEP72lJJ68sMwbxanTQyFIdxl0sMM5ET4ebb/0VOpQkX8QFkatjrHW6fg1aSd0gEAZ1+pGB
4fORcMA=

/

execute as SYS, grant to public and the function days_between returns the correct dates.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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