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:) You will not be able to win, right?

Vern

On 1/28/2015 10:02 AM, Birgitta Hauser wrote:
The software package includes SQL UDFs as well as RPG functions converting
all kinds of numeric and character dates forward and backwads that can be
used by the programmers who own the Software package.
It also includes a date table where real dates and columns with all kinds
of numeric and character representation of the same date.
This table currently covers Dates for 100 years (1940 - 2039), so the
customer/programmer only needs to join his table with this table based on
his numeric date format to get the real date values.

But my manager does not want to do that (and "we cannot expect our customers
doing that!!!"), so I need to include this in the tool.
(...and the next thing would be - he'll complain because it's too slow!)

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Birgitta Hauser

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." (Les
Brown)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
"What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training them
and keeping them!"


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Im Auftrag von
Vernon Hamberg
Gesendet: Wednesday, 28.1 2015 16:46
An: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Betreff: Re: AW: Physical Files with numeric dates?

One of the vendor reporting products I looked at has a table of dates in
many formats - you specify a range of dates that you want in the table -
10 years would be only about 36500 records - maybe there were logicals over
each format-type column - I didn't dig into it that much. But that could be
very fast - no calcs - have something that manages whether to add more years
periodically.

HTH
Vern

On 1/28/2015 8:01 AM, Birgitta Hauser wrote:
Just FYI why I asked.
We offer an software package that allows RPG programmers writing
Web-Applications without knowing anything about HTML, Javascript etc.

The RPG programmer only defines what field/column from which
table/viewl/physical file has to be displayed additionally he can add
several edit keywords.
Based on the defined files and columns we generate SQL commands on the
fly execute them display the result.
The data is automatically converted and returned in the expected
format into the appropriate RPG fields.

As for date fields currently we do not only support date fields we
also can handle numeric fields like dates based on a keyword.
Currently we support numeric dates format in the formats YYYYMMDD,
CYYMMDD, YYMMDD, YYYYDDD, YYDD. These numeric values can be relatively
easy converted and used for sorting etc.
But now my manager in his own old application a numeric date field in
an European format.
Now he insists that it is absolutely necessary that we also support
numeric dates in the European (DDMMYYYY) or USA (MMDDYYYY) or DDMMYY or
MMDDYY.
Because the year is not at the beginning (and because SQL itself does
not support numeric date fields), we need to do a lot of complex
programming, because we need to convert those date fields forward and
backward, for being able to sort them correctly etc. .
IMHO numeric dates might be widely used, but I assume in a format
where the year is at the first position. Otherwise those companies
have their own logical files that split those dates into separate columns.

My proposal was, adding views to the original files that convert those
strange numeric dates into real dates. The appropriate UDFs are
available in the software package and SQL-Views can be easily managed.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Birgitta Hauser

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
(Les
Brown)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
"What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training
them and keeping them!"


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Im Auftrag
von Paul Nelson
Gesendet: Wednesday, 28.1 2015 14:14
An: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Betreff: RE: Physical Files with numeric dates?

I know of one old package that stores the dates as a 5 digit number.
The original programmer called them "century dates". Day number one of
the century was 00001, and the last day of the century is 36525. The
package was sold internationally, so there was no worry about where
the machine was installed.

His algorithm looked at something inside the OS and figured out which
country the machine was located, how the dates were to be presented to
the end user, and to interpret what the user had entered as a date.
Internally, the date was just a number.

The rest of us programmers just needed to know how to feed the dates
into his formula. For query tool users, we had to create an auxiliary
file that provided the dates in local format.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Birgitta Hauser
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 4:32 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: Physical Files with numeric dates?

We just had a discussion tody concerning numeric date and time fields.
And just because I'm curisous:

How many of you are still using numeric fields (may be a rather big
crowd - at least those working with old applications) But how many of
you are using date fields in your tables where the year or century
year is NOT in the first position, i.e. in a Format MMDDYY or MMDDYYYY or
DDMMYY or DDMMYYYY?

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Birgitta Hauser

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
(Les
Brown)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
"What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training
them and keeping them!"


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