Re: Internal date format (numerical)

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:26:41 -0800
Message-ID: <1133551586.887296@jetspin.drizzle.com>

David Cressey wrote:

> Actually, I believe that Oracle stores about half of its range as "days
> before day zero", which I'll take as "negative dates".
> But no matter, your point is valid.
>
> My post should have dealt the the question of "what is "Day zero in Delphi"?
>
> I wonder what you get if you do, EncodeDate (1899, 12, 30) in Delphi. ?

The century and year bytes are in excess-100 notation. The hour, minute, and second are in excess-1 notation. Dates before the Common Era (B.C.E.) are less than 100. The epoch is January 1, 4712 B.C.E. For this date, the century byte is 53 and the year byte is 88. The hour byte ranges from 1 to 24. The minute and second bytes range from 1 to 60. The time defaults to midnight (1, 1, 1).

Normally, there is little reason to use the DATE datatype.

Source:
http://www.cs.umb.edu/cs634/ora9idocs/appdev.920/a97269/pc_04dat.htm

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

Received on Fri Dec 02 2005 - 13:26:41 CST