century = (century byte -100) * 100 year = year byte - 100 ts01>select 2 -- extract the century and year information from the 3 -- internal date format 4 -- century = (century byte -100) * 100 5 ( 6 to_number( 7 -- parse out integer appearing before first comma 8 substr( today_dump, 1, instr(today_dump,',')-1) - 100 9 ) * 100 10 ) 11 + 12 -- year = year byte - 100 13 ( 14 to_number( 15 substr( 16 today_dump, 17 -- get position of 2nd comma 18 instr(today_dump,',',2)+1, 19 -- get position of 2nd comma - position of 1st comma 20 instr(today_dump,',',1,2) - instr(today_dump,',',1,1) -1 21 ) 22 ) 23 - 100 24 ) current_year 25 from ( 26 -- return just the date bytes from the dump() 27 select substr(dump(today),15) today_dump from t1 28 ) a 29 / CURRENT_YEAR ------------ 2004 1 row selected. Example 2: Determining the century and year from the internal date format.