Date data types and NULL or ZERO

[Joe Boyle]

how about " where to_char(DATE_PROCESSED) = '0' "

Regards, Joe. 

  _____  

From: powerh-l-bounces+atla38=dsl.pipex.com at lists.sowder.com
[mailto:powerh-l-bounces+atla38=dsl.pipex.com at lists.sowder.com] On Behalf Of
fernando.olmos at hpa.com.au
Sent: 05 October 2005 00:37
To: powerh-l at lists.sowder.com
Subject: Date data types and NULL or ZERO

 

Hi guys, 

A work colleague of mine is having problems with SQL cursors. She is using a
simple SELECT but with a WHERE clause saying DATE_PROCESSED is NULL. Her
query does not return anything.

The database is Oracle. I was wondering how would one interrogate Oracle
databases using PH CURSORS, where you want to check a date column that is
blank?

She tried DATE_PROCESSED = 0 but the parser rejects this as an invalid
logical construct. We want to check for ZERO but it looks like we may need
to convert the 0 (CAST it) to a date type and not (I assume) a native
INTEGER type. Of course if she uses DATE_CONVERT IS NULL the parser accepts
this, but we know none of the rows have an actual NULL value.

In PL/SQL, we physically removed a date value from the column and then used
QUIZ to see if it stored the "empty" field as a NULL. We found out using a
"DEFINE a = 1 if DATE_PROCESSED is NULL else 0" came back 0 and not 1.

Cheers 

Fernando Olmos 
M.I.S. 

HPA
Direct:  03 9217 5411
Mobile: 0410 382 857
Fax:     03 9217 5716 

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