Re: Default date format

p0070621_at_oxford-brookes.ac.uk (Tommy Wareing) writes:

> Does anyone know of a wya to change the default date format
> from DD-MON-YY? All the applications we're now writing have
> to cope with possible dates after the year 1999, and so our
> code has TO_CHAR(date, 'DD-MON-YYYY') or TO_DATE(char, 'DD-MON-YYYY')
> littered through it?
> Why don't oracle have a system-wide date format, eg. in the
> config.ora file, so each database instance can use it's own
> date representation?

Yes, we do. Under Oracle7, you can specify the default date format in the init.ora file. The parameter is NLS_DATE_FORMAT. You can also override the format in a particular session by the command ALTER SESSION. Refer to your Database Adminstrator's Guide for more details.

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