Re: [Gusdev-gusdev] LoadTaxon plugin

[Jonathan C. <cra...@pc...>]

steve fischer wrote:
> 
> Jonathan-  is there an easy way in perl to get an oracle compatible date?
> 

The problem is that you're relying on Oracle's implicit conversion (from a string
to a DATE type) which will only work if the format of the provided string matches
the default NLS_DATE_FORMAT of the Oracle instance in question.  We should instead
use the TO_DATE function to do an explicit conversion from string -> DATE.  Using
TO_DATE you can specify the format along with the string, so there's no chance of
a mismatch.  Here's the man page for TO_DATE:

<http://otn.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle9i/doc_library/901_doc/server.901/a90125/functions134.htm#1003595>

We probably should use something like this:

TO_DATE('2002/12/6', 'YYYY/MM/DD')

(assuming that the date is December 6th, not June 12th.)

Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Crabtree
Center for Bioinformatics, University of Pennsylvania
1406 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021
215-573-3115