Re: DATE manipulation problem

    Thanks! I will try this and see what happens.

Dave Harris

"Sybrand Bakker" <gooiditweg_at_sybrandb.demon.nl> wrote in message news:r4houu0705qgg6ggog0n3n7e6ggnpb1g29_at_4ax.com...
> On Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:45:41 -0500, "Dave Harris" <daharris_at_erinet.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I just completed my first class in Oracle and for my final project I
built
> >a music CD database. I have a table called "songs" which has the song
title
> >and the running time (among other fields) and a table called "album"
which
> >links to the "songs" table. I wanted to do a report or a query which
would
> >add up all of the running times (which are declared as DATE datatype) for
> >all of the albums in the database and give me a total running time for
the
> >each album.
> > The teacher suggested I go back and replace the DATE running times with
> >numeric values as he believes you can't manipulate the DATE datatypes. I
was
> >wondering if you could somehow convert the running time to a string then
use
> >a substring function to pull out the minutes and seconds values to use in
> >the calculation then somehow put the final calculation back into a time
> >format.
> > I guess this is a long winded way of asking if the string conversion
can
> >work. Even though the class is over I still want to incorporate this in
my
> >database program. Any ideas and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
> >in advance!!!!
> >
> >Dave Harris
> >daharris_at_erinet.com
>
>
> I would
> - use the same dummy date for all running times (the hours, minutes
> and seconds of course are real)
> - use 60 * to_number(to_char(<running time>,'mi')) +
> to_number(to_char(<running time>,'ss')) to get the duration in seconds
> - that should do it.
>
> Hth
>
>
> >
>
> Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
>
> To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address
Received on Wed Dec 04 2002 - 19:53:02 CST