Literals

It is possible to specify a date value as a literal, like that:

DATE '2013-08-29'

This instantiates a date constant, which is equivalent to the result of

to_date('29/08/2013','dd/mm/yyyy')

The date format in this case is always yyyy-mm-dd, and is not influenced by any parameter (the default format of the to_date function is defined by the NLS_DATE_FORMAT parameter).

For example, to find all the employees that were hired during August 2013 we can use the following query:

select * 
from employees 
where hire_date >= date'2013-08-01' 
  and hire_date < date'2013-09-01';

To specify a value that contain also a time part as a literal, you can use:

TIMESTAMP '2013-08-29 13:45:00'

The format is always yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss (fractions of seconds may also be specified).