Re: timestamp to date and time column migration

[Michael Glaesemann <grzm(at)seespotcode(dot)net>]

On Jul 29, 2007, at 15:56 , Bill Totman wrote:

> On Sunday 29 July 2007 15:20, you wrote:
> > > I created a table where I used a timestamp type column and after
> > > inserting
> > > about 300 entries into this table I would now rather have two  
> > > separate
> > > columns for that data: one for just the date and the other for just
> > > the time.
> >
> > Why? What problem are you trying to solve?
>
> I was wanting to make it simple to select entries by time (of day).
>
> Is there a function that will do the same?

I believe casting the timestamp to time (or timetz) and date will do  
what you want:

test=# select current_timestamp, current_timestamp::timetz,  
current_timestamp::date;
              now              |        now         |    now
-------------------------------+--------------------+------------
2007-07-29 18:16:49.643542-05 | 18:16:49.643542-05 | 2007-07-29
(1 row)

If both date and time are important, I'd recommend keeping them in a  
timestamp and decomposing when you need to. Depending on what kinds  
of queries are performed, you may also want to look into using  
expressional indexes, such as:

CREATE INDEX timestamptz_col_date_idx ON foo (timestamptz_col::date);
CREATE INDEX timestamptz_col_timetz_idx ON foo  
(timestamptz_col::timetz);

Hope this helps.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net