Re: Internal date format (numerical)

DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org> wrote:

>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

Do you really believe that
 'Normally, there is little reason to use the DATE datatype.'..? I have always been taught to use the datatype that matches the use of the data..so use DATE for any entry that will be used in Date math ( like computing time spans or someone's age)..

Seems odd not to use it... Received on Fri Dec 02 2005 - 15:40:37 CST