Re: Get the date time from Oracle date time stamp?????

Ric wrote:
>
> I am using crystal reports to attempt to extract information from this
> database but I need to know which records were last updated. I have
> managed to find a field in Oracle and its value is based on a trigger
> function as shown below
>
> begin
>
> select TIMESTAMP_SEQ.nextval into :new.NURS_TIMESTAMP from dual;
>
> end;
>
> This at 9.45am (UK) on 05/09/2003 generated a value of 5,048,868
>
> My main expertise is in SQL Server, my question is can I reverse
> engineer this value to calculate the time? Or is it like an identity
> field in SQL server (i.e. An automatic incremental counter)

Although this field is named Timestamp_seq, it's not really a timestamp, it's just a sequence. Everytime you call TIMESTAMP_SEQ.nextval it gives you the previous value plus one (look up Sequence in your docs). I don't know how you would reverse engineer it to come up with a date/time of the last update, but you could use it to find the most recently updated record

  Select * from mytable where NURS_TIMESTAMP =

          (Select max(NURS_TIMESTAMP) from mytable)

A little more work and you can return the last n updated records.

HTH.

-- 
//-Walt
// 
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