Calculate difference between 2 date / times in Oracle SQL

oracle date-arithmetic
Steve picture Steve · Jul 8, 2009 · Viewed 828.8k times · Source

I have a table as follows:

Filename - varchar
Creation Date - Date format dd/mm/yyyy hh24:mi:ss
Oldest cdr date - Date format dd/mm/yyyy hh24:mi:ss

How can I calcuate the difference in hours minutes and seconds (and possibly days) between the two dates in Oracle SQL?

Thanks

Answer

Thilo picture Thilo · Jul 8, 2009

You can substract dates in Oracle. This will give you the difference in days. Multiply by 24 to get hours, and so on.

SQL> select oldest - creation from my_table;

If your date is stored as character data, you have to convert it to a date type first.

SQL> select 24 * (to_date('2009-07-07 22:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD hh24:mi') 
             - to_date('2009-07-07 19:30', 'YYYY-MM-DD hh24:mi')) diff_hours 
       from dual;

DIFF_HOURS
----------
       2.5

Note:

This answer applies to dates represented by the Oracle data type DATE. Oracle also has a data type TIMESTAMP, which can also represent a date (with time). If you subtract TIMESTAMP values, you get an INTERVAL; to extract numeric values, use the EXTRACT function.

Related questions

Oracle DateTime in Where Clause?

I have sql something like this: SELECT EMP_NAME, DEPT FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE TIME_CREATED >= TO_DATE('26/JAN/2011','dd/mon/yyyy') -> This returns 10 rows and TIME_CREATED = '26-JAN-2011' Now when i do this …

Read More
Oracle date "Between" Query

I am using oracle database. i want to execute one query to check the data between two dates. NAME START_DATE ------------- ------------- Small Widget 15-JAN-10 04.25.32.000000 PM Product 1 17-JAN-10 04.31.32.000000 PM select * from <TABLENAME> where start_date BETWEEN '15…

Read More
Oracle: how to add minutes to a timestamp?

I need to add 30 minutes to values in a Oracle date column. I do this in my SELECT statement by specifying to_char(date_and_time + (.000694 * 31) which works fine most of the time. But not when the time is on …

Read More