Re: Client and Server SQL statements work differently??

Alan D. Mills wrote:
>
> I recomment always using the TO_DATE function and never assuming a date
> format will be the default one for a particular database instance.

I agree with Alan, with PL/SQL I also recommend adding the explicit conversion
function into the code instead of assuming the conversion will be achieved
implicitly.
Perhaps this has been discussed before (for which I apologise in advance) but with
function overloading in the more recent versions of PL/SQL you can generate an
'interesting' scenario:
Consider one package which has two functions. Both functions have the same name (for
the sake of this example lets assume the name is "f"), but the first takes a single
argument of type varchar2, and the second takes a single argument of type date.
Now what happens if you call the function like so: f('5-AUG-98') ? You meant to call the date version, but the varchar2 is a closer fit... I'm sure that some readers will question the wisdom of creation of two such functions.

Feedback politely requested.
Regards

Mungo Henning Received on Thu Aug 06 1998 - 10:49:32 CDT