INTERVAL data type

Informix®

Informix provides the INTERVAL data type to store a value that represents a span of time.

INTERVAL types are divided into two classes:
  • Intervals of year-month class such as INTERVAL YEAR(5) TO MONTH
  • Intervals of day-time class such as INTERVAL DAY(9) TO SECOND
INTERVAL columns can be defined with various time units, by specifying a start and end qualifier. For example, you can define an interval to store a number of hours and minutes with INTERVAL HOUR(n) TO MINUTE, where n defines the maximum number of digits for the hours unit.
The values of Informix INTERVAL can be represented with a character string literal, or as INTERVAL() literals:
'-9834 15:45:12.345'  -- an INTERVAL DAY(6) TO FRACTION(3)
'7623-11'   -- an INTERVAL YEAR(9) TO MONTH
INTERVAL(18734:45) HOUR(5) TO MINUTE
INTERVAL(-7634-11) YEAR(5) TO MONTH

SQLite

SQLite 3 does not provide a data type similar to Informix INTERVAL.

Solution

The INTERVAL data type and values are converted CHAR(50) column with SQLite.

INTERVAL values can be stored and retrieved from the database. However, since SQLite does not support a native interval type, arithmetics cannot be performed on the database side in SQL statements.