Insert date and time to a table

I have a table (in Oracle 8.05) with a date column that stores date and time information. What's the best way to insert it so that when I do a select I'll have date (year, month, date) and time (hour, minute, second) and am/pm information? I've tried a couple of things with TO_DATE() function, but I was never able to get AM/PM information when I do a select. So I don't know if the info is lost or what. Here's one example of what I tried:

ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_FORMAT = "MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS AM"; update mytable set creationdate=TO_DATE('06/14/1999 08:44:39 PM','MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS AM') where userid=0; select * from mytable;

Thanks for any pointers! Received on Tue Jun 15 1999 - 15:38:04 CDT