sql - How to correctly handle dates in queries constraints

Question

I am currently using the following query to get all the inspections done on june 2010:

select inspections.name
from inspections
where
  to_char(inspections.insp_date, 'YYYY') = 2010 and
  to_char(inspections.insp_date, 'MM') = 06;

but this feels kinda awkward. Wouldn't there be a better way of doing this? Looking at http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/fcdb/oracle/or-time.html it doesn't seem so. I am using Oracle, if it makes a difference.

Thanks

Answer 1

I like to use range comparison when possible since this can be used for index-scan by the optimizer:

select inspections.name
  from inspections
 where inspections.date >= DATE '2010-06-01'
   and inspections.date < DATE '2010-07-01'