6.1 Internal DATE Storage Format
Oracle's DATE datatype
holds date as well as time
information. Regardless of the date format we use, Oracle stores
dates internally in one standard format. Internal to the database a
date is a fixed-length, seven-byte field. The seven bytes represent
the following pieces of information:
The Century The Year The Month The Day The Hour The Minute The Second
Note that even though the datatype is called a DATE, it also stores
the time. We choose the components to display (the date, the time,
the date and the time, etc.) when we retrieve a DATE value from the
database. Or, if we are fetching a DATE value into a program (e.g., a
Java program) we might choose to extract the date elements of
interest after transferring the entire date/time value to that
program.
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