oracle SQL how to remove time from date

I have a column named StartDate containing a date in this format: 03-03-2012 15:22

What I need is to convert it to date. It should be looking like this: DD/MM/YYYY

What I have tried without success is:

select 
p1.PA_VALUE as StartDate,
p2.PA_VALUE as EndDate
from WP_Work p 
LEFT JOIN PARAMETER p1 on p1.WP_ID=p.WP_ID AND p1.NAME = 'StartDate'
LEFT JOIN PARAMETER p2 on p2.WP_ID=p.WP_ID AND p2.NAME = 'Date_To'
WHERE p.TYPE = 'EventManagement2'
AND TO_DATE(p1.PA_VALUE, 'DD/MM/YYYY') >= TO_DATE('25/10/2012', 'DD/MM/YYYY')
AND TO_DATE(p2.PA_VALUE, 'DD/MM/YYYY') <= TO_DATE('26/10/2012', 'DD/MM/YYYY')

Is there a way to do this?

EDIT1: the PA_VALUE column is: VARCHAR2

Answer

When you convert your string to a date you need to match the date mask to the format in the string. This includes a time element, which you need to remove with truncation:

select 
    p1.PA_VALUE as StartDate,
    p2.PA_VALUE as EndDate
from WP_Work p 
LEFT JOIN PARAMETER p1 on p1.WP_ID=p.WP_ID AND p1.NAME = 'StartDate'
LEFT JOIN PARAMETER p2 on p2.WP_ID=p.WP_ID AND p2.NAME = 'Date_To'
WHERE p.TYPE = 'EventManagement2'
AND trunc(TO_DATE(p1.PA_VALUE, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24:MI')) >= TO_DATE('25/10/2012', 'DD/MM/YYYY')
AND trunc(TO_DATE(p2.PA_VALUE, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24:MI')) <= TO_DATE('26/10/2012', 'DD/MM/YYYY')

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Outside the scope of the question, but storing dates as strings is bad practice, and storing date times is even worse.

1. We need to convert the strings to dates in order to do any form of date processing (arithmetic, interval assessment, etc) on them
2. Strings offer no guarantees regarding format, so we run the risk of date corruption crashing our code. We can defend against this by employing VALIDATE_CONVERSION() (available since 12c, find out more ) but it’s still a PITN
3. Using non-standard datatypes makes it harder to reason about the data model and the code we build over it.