"date" as a column name

database oracle database-design ora-00904 ora-01747

bonsvr · Oct 20, 2011 · Viewed 47.3k times · Source

I have a table called calendars.

One of its columns is named 'date'

When I want to select the date column it gives error ORA-01747 namely invalid table.column.

select date from calendars

I guess this happens because 'date' is a reserved word for pl/sql. The problem is it's not even possible to change the column name :

alter table calendars rename column date to date_d

Result is: ORA-00904 error: invalid identifier.

What do you advice?

Thanks.

Answer

Have you tried

select calendars.date from calendars; /* or you could alias "calendars" if you don't want to type so much */

If that doesn't work or help, have you tried dropping the column (and maybe try referencing it with the table name prefix: calendars.date)?

It seems that Oracle will be case-sensitive if you use double quotes so

select "date" from calendars;

is not the same as

select "Date" from calendars;