Month value in SQL

Hi all

Does anyone know how to get the month field from a date in a SQL statement? I am using Oracle 8.0

There is a field called "birth_date" in my table and I have to print the number of records group by month as follows:

Month Count
--- ---
1 45
2 187
3 18
. ..
. ..
. ..
etc

I need the month value in 1-12 format. Please help..

-Chinnaselect month(birth_date),count(*)
from yourtable
group by month(birth_date)

rudy|||There is not "month" function in Oracle!
that shoulde be:
select to_char(brith_day,'mm'),count(*) from yourtable group by to_char(brith_day,'mm')|||select to_char(sysdate,'MON') from dual;

will return today's month|||MONTH() is ANSI/ISO standard sql

my apologies, Chinna, i overlooked the fact that you said oracle 8

oracle corp, in its infinite wisdom, apparently did not begin supporting standard sql until release 9

:(