Re: Y2k Server Testing, What's in a date?

"Mike Oswald" <minomaha_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

>With all of the Y2K testing planned here at work and the fact that someone
>has determined all the DBA's need to do is change the NLS date format...
>
>What is everyone else doing? How involved have you, as a DBA, or has your
>DBA's been in the Y2K process?
>
>Is it simply a NLS data format change? It seems to me... there is more to
>it.
>
>Please forward any suggestions... websites... comments on what I should be
>thinking about. We do have Developer & Designer 2000 in house... but they
>are not the core business tools. Oracle7 is primarily the backend database
>but we do have snapshots and some replication occurring.
>
>Thanks!
>
>-Mike
>
>
>

Oracle's date storage format is fully Y2K compliant - the importance of the NLS_DATE_FORMAT is in what will be the 'default' format of a date when entered or displayed - If you don't control data entry ( not a great idea ) then any date entered will be stored in the format specified by the NLS_ setting .. this, if set to MM/DD/RRRR will interpret a 2digit year entered and assign the century ( 19 or 20 ) based on the current date and the 2digit year entered ...I find more comfort in setting the NLS_DATE_FORMAT to MM/DD/YYYY ( or some other 4digit year format ) and forcing the user to enter full 4 digit years ( use the FXMM/DD/YYYY format mask to force and exact match on entry [ at least in Forms4.5/5 apps ] )

Once you control the entry of the data, the app should be fully Y2K compliant - I also believe the internals used by the RDBMS are Y2K compliant, for V7.x and above, but you should check Oracle's web site for full Y2K info....

To reply please remove the 'nospam' part of the address Received on Thu Oct 08 1998 - 12:30:28 CDT