Re: Dates for 21st Century?

In article <1995Nov9.000051.22210_at_nosc.mil> Louise Miller <miller_at_louise.ucsd.edu> writes: <snip>
>No, Steve, the systems we are all complaining about actually _store_ values
>with less than four digits for years. No matter how the user keys it,
>anyone who _stores_ years that are not 4 digits is asking for trouble.
>The last experience I had with SQLLOADER and one-digit dates from a legacy
>system, loader made the wrong assumption.

I understand. Our system is equally guilty. That's one of the big reasons we're dumping the old one, and rewriting using Oracle and Forms. It was either spend two years fixing the date problems, or convert.

Responding to an earlier post: I said MOST systems should be able to determine the century from the year. Retirement and investment systems would especially be exceptions. Birth dates should *always* require 4-digit years.

>Hmm....I wonder, do archeologists have trouble with BC?
>Anyone out there using dates before the year 1? (Just curious.)

I doubt that they use dates with months and days, so storing the values in date format would be silly.

Steve Cosner Received on Thu Nov 09 1995 - 00:00:00 CET