On Dec 2, 2009, at 1:26 PM, Ian Kelly wrote: > On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Michael Bayer <[email protected]> > wrote: >> Oracle's DATE type stores time information as well: >> >> http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/database-solutions/a-comparison-of-oracles-date-and-timestamp-datatypes-6681 >> >> DateTime is a generic type that indicates a date that could be historic or >> in the future, so uses DATE on oracle (PG only has TIMESTAMP available). >> TIMESTAMP is more like a "system time" value. > > TIMESTAMP supports the full range of values that DATE does. The only > major difference that I'm aware of is that TIMESTAMP supports > fractional second precision, and DATE does not.
from the article: Beware while the TO_CHAR function works with both datatypes, the TRUNC function will not work with a datatype of TIMESTAMP. This is a clear indication that the use of TIMESTAMP datatype should explicitly be used for date and times where a difference in time is of utmost importance, such that Oracle won't even let you compare like values. this suggests to me that DATE is more of a general purpose date/time type whereas TIMESTAMP is specifically when you need granularity to compare the ordering of events down to the millisecond, with some loss in simplicity . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sqlalchemy" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy?hl=en.
