CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

Syntax

Description of the illustration current_timestamp.gif

Purpose

CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the current date and time in the session time zone, in a value of data type TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE. The time zone offset reflects the current local time of the SQL session. If you omit precision, then the default is 6. The difference between this function and LOCALTIMESTAMP is that CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE value while LOCALTIMESTAMP returns a TIMESTAMP value.

In the optional argument, precision specifies the fractional second precision of the time value returned.

Examples

The following example illustrates that CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is sensitive to the session time zone:

ALTER SESSION SET TIME_ZONE = '-5:0';
ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_FORMAT = 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS';
SELECT SESSIONTIMEZONE, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP FROM DUAL;

SESSIONTIMEZONE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
--------------- ---------------------------------------------------
-05:00          04-APR-00 01.17.56.917550 PM -05:00

ALTER SESSION SET TIME_ZONE = '-8:0';
SELECT SESSIONTIMEZONE, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP FROM DUAL;

SESSIONTIMEZONE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
--------------- ----------------------------------------------------
-08:00          04-APR-00 10.18.21.366065 AM -08:00

When you use the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP with a format mask, take care that the format mask matches the value returned by the function. For example, consider the following table:

CREATE TABLE current_test (col1 TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE);

The following statement fails because the mask does not include the TIME ZONE portion of the type returned by the function:

INSERT INTO current_test VALUES
  (TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 'DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF PM'));

The following statement uses the correct format mask to match the return type of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP:

INSERT INTO current_test VALUES
  (TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 'DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF PM TZH:TZM'));