Bruce,
I would recommend converting to a date field using something like
TO_DATE(column_name,'RRMMDD') Check out the RR format mask in the SQL
Reference manual. Having the column as a DATE allows for date arithmetic.
Sorting is not a problem either.
Mike Morgan
Bruce Bristol <bbristol_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
> I'm going to be adding, removing and possibly changing some columns on
> our tables. This affords me the opportunity to add century to a column
> that we currently have a yymmdd date stored in.
>
> The column's type is number(6).
>
> The data we'll always receive from our customer will be in the yymmdd
> format, even on/after 2000.
>
> For sorting purposes, I can increase the column to a number(8) and add
> the century in our programs, or perhaps an insert trigger.
>
> Should I do this, or just change the column type to 'date'? If I do
> change the column type to date, how do I make sure that programs can
> access it by yymmdd or even yyyymmdd?
>
> If access can still be by yymmdd, will oracle think 000101 is 1900 or
> 2000?
Received on Sun Aug 03 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT
