Oracle CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

The Oracle CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function returns the current date and time in session time zone.

Syntax

The following illustrates the syntax of the Oracle CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function:

CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(factional_second_precision)
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Arguments

1) factional_second_precision

The function accepts an optional argument named factional_second_precision that determines the number of fractional second precision in the returned time value.

If you omit the factional_second_prevision argument, it defaults to 6.

Return Value

The Oracle CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns a value of the current timestamp in TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type.

Examples

The following statement changes the format of timestamp values to include the time components:

ALTER SESSION SET NLS_DATE_FORMAT = 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS';
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

The following example shows the current timestamp in the session time zone:

SELECT
  CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
FROM
  dual;
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Here is the output:

06-AUG-17 08.26.52.742000000 PM -07:00
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Let’s try to change the session time zone to the new one:

ALTER SESSION SET TIME_ZONE = '-08:00';
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

And get the current timestamp again:

SELECT
  CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
FROM
  dual;  
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

As you can see, the current timestamp was adjusted to the new session time zone as shown below:

06-AUG-17 07.50.48.004000000 PM -08:00
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Remarks

Notice that the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE value while the LOCALTIMESTAMP returns a TIMESTAMP value without the time zone data.

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use the Oracle CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function to get the current timestamp in session time zone.