How date is stored in Oralce?

I would like to get some feed backs, since i am very new to Oracle
world.

1. If Datatype is 'date' and no date is stored in the field, how is the
datae acutally stored in Oracle? As nulls or Zeroes? This will happen
for field which are not 'required' in order to write a record.

2. How is the date in Oracle actually stored? Are they represented as an
offset from a base date/time?

Ans:

1. Any column that holds no data is stored as NULL's and therefore data is not
written to this particular column. Also, remember that the predicate is COL1
is NULL for checking a NULL.

2. Dates are stored as a 7 byte number, with the offset from somewhere in
4000BC running through to 4000AD.

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