Oracle: how to add minutes to a timestamp?

Question

I need to add 30 minutes to values in a Oracle date column. I do this in my SELECT statement by specifying

to_char(date_and_time + (.000694 * 31)

Answer 1

Based on what you're asking for, you want the HH24:MI format for to_char.

Answer 2

UPDATE "TABLE" 
SET DATE_FIELD = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP + interval '48' minute 
WHERE (...)

Where interval is one of

• YEAR
• MONTH
• DAY
• HOUR
• MINUTE
• SECOND

Answer 3

I prefer using an interval literal for this, because interval '30' minute or interval '5' second is a lot easier to read then 30 / (24 * 60) or 5 / (24 * 60 * 69)

e.g.

• some_date + interval '2' hour
• some_date + interval '30' minute
• some_date + interval '5' second
• some_date + interval '2' day

You can also combine several units into one expression:

• some_date + interval '2 3:06' day to minute

Adds 2 days, 3 hours and 6 minutes to the date value

The above is also standard SQL and also works in several other DBMS.

More details in the manual: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SQLRF/sql_elements003.htm#SQLRF00221

Answer 4

from http://www.orafaq.com/faq/how_does_one_add_a_day_hour_minute_second_to_a_date_value

The SYSDATE pseudo-column shows the current system date and time. Adding 1 to SYSDATE will advance the date by 1 day. Use fractions to add hours, minutes or seconds to the date

SQL> select sysdate, sysdate+1/24, sysdate +1/1440, sysdate + 1/86400 from dual;

SYSDATE              SYSDATE+1/24         SYSDATE+1/1440       SYSDATE+1/86400
-------------------- -------------------- -------------------- --------------------
03-Jul-2002 08:32:12 03-Jul-2002 09:32:12 03-Jul-2002 08:33:12 03-Jul-2002 08:32:13

Answer 5

All of the other answers are basically right but I don't think anyone's directly answered your original question.

Assuming that "date_and_time" in your example is a column with type DATE or TIMESTAMP, I think you just need to change this:

to_char(date_and_time + (.000694 * 31))

to this:

to_char(date_and_time + (.000694 * 31), 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI')

It sounds like your default date format uses the "HH" code for the hour, not "HH24".

Also, I think your constant term is both confusing and imprecise. I guess what you did is calculate that (.000694) is about the value of a minute, and you are multiplying it by the number of minutes you want to add (31 in the example, although you said 30 in the text).

I would also start with a day and divide it into the units you want within your code. In this case, (1/48) would be 30 minutes; or if you wanted to break it up for clarity, you could write ( (1/24) * (1/2) ).

This would avoid rounding errors (except for those inherent in floating point which should be meaningless here) and is clearer, at least to me.

Answer 6

In addition to being able to add a number of days to a date, you can use interval data types assuming you are on Oracle 9i or later, which can be somewhat easier to read,

SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
SELECT sysdate, sysdate + interval '30' minute FROM dual
SQL> /

SYSDATE              SYSDATE+INTERVAL'30'
-------------------- --------------------
02-NOV-2008 16:21:40 02-NOV-2008 16:51:40