Hello H2 folks.

When upgrading from H2 1.4.200 to 2.0.202 (also to latest 2.1.210), I noticed that what SYSDATE returns has changed and it no longer includes time information.

Details

For context I use H2 to build query tests for an app that uses an Oracle database and run H2 with MODE=Oracle.

These are the results I get from selecting sysdate and current_date from H2 1.x and 2.x:

-- H2 1.x
sysdate= 2022-01-20 12:33:37.966253
current_date= 2022-01-20 00:00:00.0

-- H2 2.x
sysdate= 2022-01-20 00:00:00.0
current_date= 2022-01-20 00:00:00.0

This is an issue for us since Oracle SYSDATE includes time information to second precision (also seems to be true of SYSDATE() in mysql). I couldn't find a reason for this change in the release notes.

While I'm uncertain as to why this would be a desirable change, looking through docs it did seem like there was maybe a way for me to change the behavior by using my own alias override. Except that also does not appear to work.

-- where Sysdate.sysdate just returns a timestamp with second precision
SET BUILTIN_ALIAS_OVERRIDE TRUE;
CREATE ALIAS CURRENT_DATE FOR "com.nsperkins.h2test.util.h2.Sysdate.sysdate";
CREATE ALIAS SYSDATE FOR "com.nsperkins.h2test.util.h2.Sysdate.sysdate";

sysdate= 2022-01-20 00:00:00.0
current_date= 2022-01-20 12:37:49.0

Interestingly enough the alias override for current_date did work, but the alias for sysdate appears to be ignored.

Questions

1. Was the SYSDATE behavior change intentional?
2. If the change was intentional, could MODE=Oracle have the more oracle-y SYSDATE behavior? For what it's worth current_date and sysdate both return time with second precision in Oracle but they have different timezone behavior.
3. Is it a bug that CREATE ALIAS SYSDATE... does not appear to have any effect?
4. Is there maybe some other workaround I could do? I combed through the docs but did not see anything obvious.

Thanks.