Re: Storing a "fuzzy date"

If you upgrade to 9i version 2 you will find the OLAP capabilities there built right into the relational database. What you are trying to do is the bread-and-butter of Oracle Express and this would be the ideal, and optimal, place for you to do what you want.

Daniel Morgan

"Michael G. Schneider" wrote:

> "Michael G. Schneider" <mgs_at_mgs-software.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:a533dk$t6$02$1_at_news.t-online.com...
> > With Oracle 8.1.7
> >
> > In my application I would like to support a "fuzzy date". The database
> > should not only hold specific dates (as e.g. Feb 20th 2002), but also
> > month/year-based dates as "Feb 2002" or just "2002".
>
> Sorry, if my question hasn't been clear enough. I was mostly thinking about
> how to store this data in a the database. Two ideas come to my mind:
>
> [1] A normal DATE column plus an CHAR(1) column describing, whether the DATE
> column describes a dd.mm.yyyy or a mm.yyyy or a yyyy.
>
> [2] A CHAR(10) column holding data as "2002-02-21" or "2002-02" or "2002",
> where the column is self explaining and does not need an additional column.
>
> So question is: has anybody developed an application with this kind of
> "fuzzy date"? Did you choose [1] or [2] or maybe something different?
>
> Michael G. Schneider
Received on Fri Feb 22 2002 - 11:50:32 CST