RE: Timestamp - to be or not to be?

From: Justin Cave (DDBC) <jcave_at_ddbcinc.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 14:33:54 -0700
Message-ID: <87E9F113CEF1D211A4C3009027301874272DA7@ddbcinc.ddbc.local>

The only reason I would see is that if you still have older clients, they may not understand the timestamp data types. A timestamp will use additional space, so that may be another concern. Depending on your developers, there may be a concern around the implied precision/ accuracy/ uniqueness of a timestamp. Developers may be confused by the fact that not all operating systems provide the same accuracy with timestamps, so you may only get 3 decimal digits on one platform and 6 on another.

If you don't need the subsecond precision or the time zone functionality, I don't see a compelling need to switch from dates.

Justin Cave
Distributed Database Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Mark Moynahan Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 1:37 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Timestamp - to be or not to be?

Hi,

Are there any technical reasons not to go forth with timestamp instead of date datatype? Are there any gotcha's by converting to timestamp?

If an application doesn't use fractions of a second is there any real need to use timestamp datatype?

Thanks,

Mark

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Received on Thu Mar 18 2004 - 16:00:44 CST