Java application is passing date and time to Oracle SPR as a string parameter that contains fractional seconds points (milliseconds). According to Oracle documentation, FF format mask is supposed to work with fractional seconds, and specifically FF3 should work for parsing those milliseconds. However I am getting the following Oracle error ORA-01821: date format not recognized :

-- this code does not work - it throws the following ORACLE error:
-- ORA-01821: date format not recognized
--
SELECT TO_DATE('2010-12-25 00:00:00.000', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF3') 
FROM DUAL;

-- removed FF3 from the format mask - still does not work -
-- it throws ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string
SELECT TO_DATE('2010-12-25 00:00:00.000', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') 
FROM DUAL;

-- this works, b/c fractinal seconds mask has been removed from the formatting string, AND milliseconds have been removed from the INPUT string:
SELECT TO_DATE('2010-12-25 00:00:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') 
FROM DUAL;

The latest statement works, but I had to parse the input string and manually remove the milliseconds part. I would rather not do that and just use the FF or whatever is supposed to work with fractional seconds.

Does anyone know how to parse those milliseconds and why FF mask is not working as expected? Thanks!