Oracle DATE columns actually contain a timestamp value consisting of the date part and a time part.  How can I retrieve the entire timestamp value into my program?

The OpenESQL precompiler looks at the size of the host variable being used and will retrieve the appropriate value depending on this size.

So if you have a SELECT statement that looks like:

     EXEC SQL 
          SELECT
              A.HireDate
          INTO
             :Employee-HireDate
          FROM Employee A
              WHERE ( A.EmployeeID = :Employee-EmployeeID )
     END-EXEC

If Employee-HireDate...

01  Employee-HireDate      pic x(10).
or
01 Employee-HireDate SQL TYPE DATE.

The value returned will be just the date part, e.g. 1978-12-21

01 Employee-HireDate       pic x(29).
or
01 Employee-HireDate SQL TYPE TIMESTAMP.

The value returned will be date and time parts, e.g. 1978-12-21 02:15:10.0000000