Date difference in seconds

"Raghunath T" <raghunatht@mindtree.com> writes:

Now I want the difference between start time and end time in seconds.
Select date_part('seconds',start_time - end_time) from temp; gives
me only the difference between the seconds value in both timestamps. It
ignores all the days, hrs, minutes etc.

Try "date_part('epoch',start_time - end_time)". See
http://www.postgresql.org/devel-corner/docs/postgres/functions-datetime.html

regards, tom lane

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Raghunath T wrote:

Hi ,
Please consider the following schema and the query given below and
let me know how to get the results I want.

CREATE TABLE temp (
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
start_time TIMESTAMP,
end_time TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

Now I want the difference between start time and end time in seconds.
Select date_part('seconds',start_time - end_time) from temp; gives
me only the difference between the seconds value in both timestamps. It
ignores all the days, hrs, minutes etc.

My problem is that I want the actual difference between the two timestamps
expressed in seconds.

You should be able to get that with date_part('epoch', start_time-end_time)
(or more likely end_time-start_time unless you want a negative number)