I am working on a program to read in Timestamps from an Oracle DB and check how long transactions are taking by subtracting the Timestamps.

The DB is setup so that when a transaction starts an entry is made into the DB with a MsgID, Timestamp, "START" then when it completes a new record is made MsgID, Timestamp, "END". Thanks to RhinoBull I have figured out how to read the Oracle Timestamps into VB but it seems no Microsoft products can perform date functions on these due to the format containing sub-seconds: 14-JUL-10 03.01.48.483624 AM.

I know I could break those down into various pieces then compare each piece and put the result back together but that is a real PITA. Is there a way to query the DB to return both Timestamps AND the difference between them as part of a SINGLE record?