Ian In Oracle Database, you can format numbers in many ways.
For example, you can format a number as a currency, with commas and decimal points in the right place. You can specify leading zeros, you can add a fractional part – or remove it, if that’s what’s required.
Update January 2026: When I wrote this article in 2021, the full SQL Server image couldn’t be installed on Apple Silicon machines (the M1 Macs). We had to install SQL Edge instead, which is why I wrote this article. Fortunately, things have progressed since then, and we can now install the full SQL Server image on Apple Silicon machines (including M1, M2, M3, M4).
Therefore, I recommend you read How to Install SQL Server on a Mac in 2026 instead of this article. It’s a very similar process to the one outlined in this article, but it actually installs SQL Server instead of SQL Edge (which has since been retired).
In Oracle Database, we can use the TO_CHAR(datetime) function to return the various date parts from a datetime value, including the short day name.
The short day name is also referred to as the abbreviated day name. In any case, below are examples of returning the short day name from a date value in Oracle.
Below is a list of territories that are supported by Oracle Database. These can be used when setting the NLS_TERRITORY initialization parameter.
In SQL Server, you can use the ALTER LOGIN statement to change the default language for a specific login.
Doing this will ensure that whenever that login connects to SQL Server, all date/time formats and system messages are presented in the correct format and language.
When getting the day and/or month name from a date in Oracle, you may want to return it in uppercase, lowercase, or title case.
Fortunately, this is easy to do. The result reflects the capitalisation of your format model.
In Oracle Database, the JSON_OBJECTAGG() function creates a JSON object from a key-value pair.
Typically, the property key, the property value, or both are columns of SQL expressions.
When using SQLcl to query Oracle Database, you can use the SET SQLFORMAT command to determine the format of the results.
You can also use inline comments to specify the format from directly within your query.
In Oracle Database, the JSON_OBJECT() function creates a JSON object from a sequence of key-value pairs or one object type instance.