Select records for a certain year Oracle

You can use to_date function

http://psoug.org/reference/date_func.html

select *
  from sales_table
 where tran_date >= to_date('1.1.' || 2013, 'DD.MM.YYYY') and 
       tran_date < to_date('1.1.' || (2013 + 1), 'DD.MM.YYYY')

solution with explicit comparisons (tran_date >= ... and tran_date < ...) is able to use index(es) on tran_date field.

Think on borders: e.g. if tran_date = '31.12.2013 18:24:45.155' than your code tran_date <='31-DEC-2013' will miss it

Use the extract function to pull the year from the date:

select * from sales_table
where extract(YEAR from tran_date) = 2013