TIME literal

Syntax

TIME '<HH:MM[:SS]>'

TIME '09:30:00'

Description

A TIME literal is a clock time with no date — like an opening hour or a daily deadline. Write it as the keyword TIME followed by an ISO-8601 time in quotes. Use it to compare against time-of-day columns or to compute time offsets.

Technical Description

TIME '…' parses an ISO-8601 local time into a zone-less civil java.time.LocalTime at parse time; a malformed payload is a positioned parse error. It infers as the TIME scalar type. TIME literals push down to SQL (per dialect), except to SQLite, which has no time type. Single- or double-quoted payloads are both accepted.

Examples

Rows during business hours:

σ start_time >= TIME '09:00:00' ∧ start_time < TIME '17:00:00' (Shifts)

σ start_time ≥ TIME '09:00:00' ∧ start_time < TIME '17:00:00' (Shifts)

SELECT start_time >= TIME '09:00:00' AND start_time < TIME '17:00:00' (Shifts)

Shift a time by a duration (TIME ± DURATION → TIME, wraps at 24h):

π id, (start_time + DURATION 'PT30M') → grace_end (Shifts)

PROJECT id, (start_time + DURATION 'PT30M') -> grace_end (Shifts)

A fixed cut-off:

π id, TIME '23:59:59' → cutoff (Slots)

PROJECT id, TIME '23:59:59' -> cutoff (Slots)

Limitations

A TIME has no date component, and arithmetic wraps around at 24 hours. Comparisons must be against another TIME (same-type only).

Alternatives

TIMESTAMP for a full date+time instant; DATE for a calendar day; to_time(str) to parse a time from a string.

See Also

timestamp-literal, date-literal, duration-literal, to_time, hour, minute, second

Notes

TIME ± DURATION yields a TIME and wraps over midnight.