"date" as a column name

Question

I have a table called calendars.

One of its columns is named 'date'

When I want to select the date column it gives error ORA-01747 namely invalid table.column.

select date from calendars

I guess this happens because 'date' is a reserved word for pl/sql. The problem is it's not even possible to change the column name :

alter table calendars rename column date to date_d

Result is: ORA-00904 error: invalid identifier.

What do you advice?

Thanks.

It *really* should be valid to use (any) reserved word as a column name as `"date"` or `[date]` (but perhaps the latter is TSQL?), but I don't use Oracle so... perhaps the schema is not as expected? — , Oct 20 '11 at 21:19
(BTW, try as I might, I can't even create a table in oracle with a column named date) — KevinDTimm, Oct 20 '11 at 21:30
yes but you can --> create table a ("DATE" date), if you want to make the table user suffer :) — bonsvr, Oct 20 '11 at 21:36

score 23 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

23

Have you tried

select calendars.date from calendars; /* or you could alias "calendars" if you don't want to type so much */

If that doesn't work or help, have you tried dropping the column (and maybe try referencing it with the table name prefix: calendars.date)?

It seems that Oracle will be case-sensitive if you use double quotes so

select "date" from calendars;

is not the same as

select "Date" from calendars;

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

answered Oct 20 '11 at 21:07

it gives ORA-01747 error when I add the table name or alias. I didnt try to drop the column but there is no problem with select * from calendars. So I dont need to drop the column if any further action wouldnt be taken. – bonsvr Oct 20 '11 at 21:18
3

select "DATE" from calendars solved it. It was DATE, not date. – bonsvr Oct 20 '11 at 21:31

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 20 '11 at 21:09

10

Try escaping the reserved word with double quotes.

select "date" from calendars

answered Oct 20 '11 at 21:09

Joe Stefanelli

The double-quotes seem to make Oracle act in a case-sensitive fashion when looking for the `date` column. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Oct 20 '11 at 21:21
@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner That is true. Case must match exactly when using double-quotes. – Joe Stefanelli Oct 20 '11 at 21:25

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 30 '12 at 12:04

date is a reserved keyword and hence cannot be used like

SELECT date from some table

there can be multiple solutions for the problem

SELECT [date] FROM tableName

SELECT 'date' from tableName

SELECT tableName.date from tableName

3 Answers3