title: Oracle Sql get only month and year in date datatype
body: <p>I want to store only the month and the year in oracle data type.</p>
  
  <p>I have a date like '01-FEB-2010' stored in a column called time_period.</p>
  
  <p>To get only the month and year i wrote a query like</p>
  
  <pre><code>select to_char(time_period,'MON-YYYY') from fact_table;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I go the result as 'FEB-2010' which is fine but the only problem is that it is in varchar datatype.</p>
  
  <p>So I did like</p>
  
  <pre><code>select to_date(to_char(time_period,'MON-YYYY'),'MON-YYYY') from fact_table
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I get 01-FEB-2010.  Is it not possible to store only FEB-2010 in the date datatype</p>