Re: "Delta" or "elapsed" time column in Oracle

"Bill McLaughlin" <mcbill20_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:e9cbc4f2.0406071851.35ee93ec_at_posting.google.com...
> Thanks again to both of you. I agree that I need to do some more
> experimentation before deciding on a particular format. Right now I am
> going to add a "seconds" column and see how much work it is to get the
> queries and reports I want from that. To be honest, all of the numeric
> formats available in Oracle confuse me. Most of the programming I have
> done has been accounting and shop floor type stuff-- calculating times
> between dates, dollar amounts, etc. rather than integer stuff. I
> rarely had columns that would only contain whole numbers. So, just
> about everything I've put together in the past would be a column that
> is "number(w,f)".
>
> That said, can you point me to a good document that explains the
> internal formats and recommendations for when to use each type? Most
> of what I have found so far just gives a brief overview of what _can_
> be stored in each format, rather than what _should_ be stored in a
> particular format.
>
> Thanks.

I am not aware of anything like this on-line (but haven't really looked) beyond Oracle's own documentation, which is pretty exhaustive. Perhaps others can jump in and provide links. I'm fairly new to Oracle programming and am doing most of it directly in PL/SQL accessed from Borland's Delphi. "Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition" by Feuerstein & Pribyl has proven to be an invaluable reference, with lots of in-depth information.

Hope that helps,
Dave Received on Tue Jun 08 2004 - 13:24:58 CDT