HELP - Ordering by Date format

I have a project that requires the output of an SQL Query to a file - easy enough - but the results have to be in order of DATE & TIME.

 If I do a:

	SELECT .., to_char(very_tarty_column, 'DD/MM/YY HH24:MI:SS', ..


	..

	.. where statements etc..


	..

	ORDER BY 2 ASC, ..;

 Oracle outputs the data correctly except for the order. I am aware that the  to_char() uses an alpha sort & therefore 15 comes before 6, but if I sort  by:

	SELECT .., very_tarty_column, ..


	..

	.. where statements etc..


	..  

	ORDER BY 2 ASC, ..;

 Oracle proceeds to use the DATE only, and not the TIME section too and also  the date is in the wrong format.

 It may have a very simple solution and I'm being thick - or - is this a  functional problem?

 Can some-one help?

 The output of the SELECT does not matter, as I can adjust the SQL results parser.

 Thanks in advance,

 Nick.

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 | N.Kitchener_at_axion.bt.co.uk |                                            |
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