The SQL itself is bad. Double-quotes are used for identifiers, single-quotes are used for data. Sqlplus should have barfed with a very clear error message:

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00904: "yyyymmdd": invalid identifier

[download]

So, instead of "yyyymmdd", use 'yyyymmdd'. Furthermore, '88888888' is confusing, as without significant change, the highest date in year 8888 would be 12/31.

But, that's not the best way to do it anyway. In general, you should avoid placing a function on a column in a where clause, both because it negates the use of (a non-function based) index, and because the function must be executed for every value. That a lot of wasted CPU time. Instead, place the functions on the values, so that the functions run only once:

end_date_time BETWEEN TO_DATE('00010101', 'YYYYMMDD') AND TO_DATE('88881231', 'YYYYMMDD')

Fwiw, unless you specifically want to exclude all dates BCE, the between itself is redundant, and can be expressed:

end_date_time <= TO_DATE('88881231', 'YYYYMMDD')

In reply to Re: CGI-SQL Query Issue by chacham
in thread CGI-SQL Query Issue by Anonymous Monk

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