Hi everyone,
First of all, let me thank all of you for the very informative discussion. I will say my solution was to declare the field YYYYMMDDHH24 as int (can handle till Dec 31, 2147, Hr23 -- which will be 2147123123). Also this way, I can still use between etc to select a range of dates.. of course, I will miss validation.. I believe it will work for me to the best of my knowledge. (let me know if you have experiences with storing time as int and there are issues I have not thought of)..
thanks, murali.