Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days, Fourth Edition

Using Functions to Format Date and Time Values

We live in a civilization governed by times and dates, and most major implementations of SQL have functions to cope with these concepts. This section uses the table PROJECT to demonstrate the time and date functions.

SQL> SELECT * FROM PROJECT;

TASK            STARTDATE ENDDATE
--------------- --------- ---------
KICKOFF MTG     01-APR-95 01-APR-95
TECH SURVEY     02-APR-95 01-MAY-95
USER MTGS       15-MAY-95 30-MAY-95
DESIGN WIDGET   01-JUN-95 30-JUN-95
CODE WIDGET     01-JUL-95 02-SEP-95
TESTING         03-SEP-95 17-JAN-96

6 rows selected.

The MySQL equivalent is

 mysql> select * from project; +---------------+------------+------------+ | task | startdate | enddate | +---------------+------------+------------+ | KICKOFF MTG | 1998-04-01 ...