Date and DateTime columns

Hi,

Using Oracle 8, Delphi 5, Midas

This is a design question. We have approximately 65 date fields. A little less than half (30) of them are required to be timestamps. The rest only need to be concerned with the date portion.

We are having an internal debate on how to treat these fields.

One faction wants to treat all the date columns the same and populate them with the date and current time, a timestamp. This would mean that all date columns would be handled consistently. It would require that any date only comparisons and selects would need to truncate the time. This would need to be done in our sql code, our Delphi application code, and any tools that the end user would use.

The other faction wants to specifically class the two date types. All date only fields would have a naming convention of XXX_DT. They would be populated with the date and 00:00:00 time. In code we would always use
  MyDate := Date;
The timestamp fields would have a naming convention of XXX_TS. They would be populated with a full date/time timestamp.   MyDate := Now;
When manipulating the dates, the developer and end user would know when they have to truncate time by the column name being in the format XXX_TS. Any XXX_DT columns could use the raw value for comparisons and selects.

Are there any other issues we are not aware of? How do others handle this situation?

Thanks

-- 
Jim Poe ( jpoe_at_fulcrumit.com )