title: How to select records for the Current Month In Oracle?
body: <p>I am writing a Java Program where I am required to select Records for the Current Month from an Oracle database. Any time I need to select Records for the Current day I use:</p>
  <pre><code>select * from purchases where purchase_date = to_char(sysdate, 'DD-MON-YYYY')
  </code></pre>
  <p>What Method should I use to select records from the current Month?
  On the table the dates appear like:</p>
  <pre><code>10/4/2012 //for 4th October 2012
  </code></pre>
  <p>I tried</p>
  <pre><code>select * from purchases where purchase_date like to_char(sysdate, 'MON-YYYY')
  </code></pre>
  <p>This selects nothing of course please assist.</p>