Its a long time since I did any SQl and it was mostly DB2 rather than Oracle, but I seem to remember a peice of SQL something like ...'somedatestring' AS DATE... which as I recall seem to be able to handle just about any date format I threw at it. Does Oracle not have such a thing?

I also seem to remember using something like ...CAST( 'stringdate' AS DATE) DATETIME...

Update:I have since tried to verify my (apparently failing) memory, and have been unable to do so.

I tried to look out some of my old DB2 manuals but it seems they got 'lost' during my last house move, and I had a mouche around on the web, also without success.

I distinctly remember being very proud of a peice of C I wrote to pre-format TIMESTAMP fields prior to passing them on to DB2 and when I showed it to a collegue, being show something that did everything my routine did and more.

My best guess, in the absence of any supporting evidence to the contrary, is that this must have been some local innovation (I was working inside IBM at the time) - perhaps a local grown stored procedure or something.

Sorry for my flaky memory.

The li'l grey cells aren't what they once were--perhaps they never were to start with!¬(