Re: Invalid Date, 61-APR-2003, found in Oracle Date Field

Peter wrote:
>
> RDBMS Version: 8.1.6.3
> Operating System and Version: Solaris 2.7
>
> Invalid Date, 61-APR-2003, found in Oracle Date Field
>
> One of our application users recently reported an invalid date that was
> stored in two of their tables. The date was 61-APR-2003 and it was in two
> different tables which led them to believe that it had been transferred from
> one table to another or they had both been inserted at the same time since
> both dates shared a common employee number.
>
> I can't think of anyway that the database would allow an invalid date to be
> entered into a date field. However, I did find this in the Oracle Call
> Interface Programmer's Guide under External Data types.
>
> "When you enter a date in binary format using the DATE external datatype,
> the database does not do consistency or range checking. All data in this
> format must be carefully validated before input."
>
> I'm not sure if the above statement means that you can enter invalid dates
> into Oracle's internal DATE datatype since it is an external datatype.
>
> Lastly, I realise that all 8.1.6 databases should be upgraded to at least
> 8.1.7, but due to application complications, this cannot be done yet.

What its saying is that dates are basically just 7 bytes. If you use some means (eg OCI) to simply dump any old values into those 7 bytes you could concoct any old 'date' value

hth
connor

-- 
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Connor McDonald
http://www.oracledba.co.uk

"Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue"