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Re: Boolean dates...

From: <JApplewhite_at_austin.isd.tenet.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:39:26 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005D3FE2.20031022123926@fatcity.com>

Jose,

In my experience - long ago - managing dates rarely involved Boolean logic, which is Two Valued Logic, True or False. Instead, they involved MVL
(Multi-Valued Logic) with the most common return value being one of a
bewildering assortment of INDETERMINATE variations, followed by frequent FALSE return values, and extremely rare occurrances of the TRUE return value.

Perhaps an example query and its results will illustrate.

Me: "So Pam, can we make it a date Saturday night? Say, dinner and a movie?"

Possible responses, with actual MVL result for "Will there be a Date?":

Pam: "Oh gosh, I'd love to, but not this weekend."          - INDETERMINATE
Pam: "Let me check my calendar and I'll get back to you."   - INDETERMINATE
Pam: "I'll have to wait and see how the week goes."   - INDETERMINATE
Pam: "Sorry, I've got other plans that night."        - FALSE
Pam: "HA HA HA HA HA..." (hysterical laughter)        - FALSE
Pam: "Sure, pick me up at 8:00."                      - TRUE  (very rare)

Those observations with the usual caveat - YMMV. ;-)

Jack C. Applewhite
Database Administrator
Austin Independent School District
Austin, Texas
512.414.9715 (wk)
512.935.5929 (pager, 5129355929_at_page.metrocall.com) JApplewhite_at_austin.isd.tenet.edu

                                                                                                                              
                      Jose Luis Delgado                                                                                       
                      <joseluis_delgado        To:       Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>          
                      @yahoo.com>              cc:                                                                            
                      Sent by:                 Subject:  Boolean dates...                                                     
                      ml-errors_at_fatcity                                                                                       
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                      10/22/2003 10:19                                                                                        
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Hi to all!

We have an old app that manages something that my boss calls: boolean dates.

He told me that exists an algorithm that manages dates as a boolean format.

We have several tables in this form:

Note: The following table: PAAM
has the field BDATE defined as NUMBER.

sql> select bdate from paam
sql> where rownum < 6

BDATE



728464
728434
728403
728495
728283

now, I need to convert that format to an 'understandable' format to get the old data and old dates.

I'm looking (google-ing) for that subject but, without luck.

any ideas? help?, pls...

Thanks in advance

Regards!
JL

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Received on Wed Oct 22 2003 - 15:39:26 CDT

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