Extracting the total number of seconds from an interval data-type

I hope this help:

zep@dev> select interval_difference
      2        ,sysdate + (interval_difference * 86400) - sysdate as fract_sec_difference
      3  from   (select systimestamp - (systimestamp - 1) as interval_difference
      4          from   dual)
      5 ;

INTERVAL_DIFFERENCE                                                             FRACT_SEC_DIFFERENCE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------
+000000001 00:00:00.375000                                                                 86400,375

With your test:

zep@dev> select interval_difference
      2        ,abs(extract(second from interval_difference) +
      3        extract(minute from interval_difference) * 60 +
      4        extract(hour from interval_difference) * 60 * 60 +
      5        extract(day from interval_difference) * 60 * 60 * 24) as your_sec_difference
      6        ,sysdate + (interval_difference * 86400) - sysdate as fract_sec_difference
      7        ,round(sysdate + (interval_difference * 86400) - sysdate) as sec_difference
      8        ,round((sysdate + (interval_difference * 86400) - sysdate) * 1000) as millisec_difference
      9  from   (select systimestamp - (systimestamp - 1) as interval_difference
     10          from   dual)
     11  /

INTERVAL_DIFFERENCE                                                             YOUR_SEC_DIFFERENCE FRACT_SEC_DIFFERENCE SEC_DIFFERENCE MILLISEC_DIFFERENCE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------- -------------------- -------------- -------------------
+000000001 00:00:00.515000                                                                86400,515            86400,515          86401            86400515

zep@dev> 

An easy way:

select extract(day from (ts1-ts2)*86400) from dual;

The idea is to convert the interval value into days by times 86400 (= 24*60*60). Then extract the 'day' value which is actually second value we wanted.

I've found this to work. Apparently, if you do arithmetics with timestamps they are converted to some internal datatype that, when substracted from each other, returns the interval as a number.

Easy? Yes. Elegant? No. Gets the work done? Oh yeah.

SELECT ( (A + 0) - (B + 0) ) * 24 * 60 * 60 
FROM
(
   SELECT SYSTIMESTAMP A,
          SYSTIMESTAMP - INTERVAL '1' MINUTE B
   FROM DUAL
);