title: the creation date of a database
body: <p>This is a question that originated from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2522626/check-how-old-an-oracle-database-is/2523227#2523227">this</a> question by Jamie.</p>
  
  <p>I thought I'll check Dougman's answer. What's happening here? A restore?</p>
  
  <pre><code>select created from dba_users where username = 'SYS';
  
  select min(created) FROM dba_objects;
  
  select created from v$database;
  
  CREATED                   
  ------------------------- 
  10-SEP-08 11:24:44        
  
  MIN(CREATED)              
  ------------------------- 
  10-SEP-08 11:24:28        
  
  CREATED                   
  ------------------------- 
  18-DEC-09 15:49:00      
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Created from v$database is more than one year later than creation date of user SYS and SYS' objects. </p>