RE: L-date fields

["Kahn, David" <KAHN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

boothm@earth.goddard.edu

>Wouldn't a d-o-b field be considered "strictly necessary" for a 4-digit
>year on the screen?

To display, yes; to key, no. The DOB of a living person cannot possibly
be more than about 120 years in the past. A program can work out a
reasonable default as well as being provided with validation limits.
Current employees, for example, will likely, but maybe not necessarily,
be between 16 and 65 years old. A clinic's patients might be from 0 to
110+ years, but a gerontologist's will not be below about 60. Sometimes
anything other than the default century would be invalid, sometimes the
default is only a best guess. When the default is a guess and is
accepted the program should get the user to confirm.

>...as well as any fields relating to property deeds and
>transfers, historical references, obvious on-screen sorting fields and
>filters, and query usage?  It's reasonable to expect a user to understand
>the appearance of 4-digit years in those cases.

Yes, there will be cases when the program may not be able to make a
reasonable guess. Then you have a good case for always forcing entry of
all 4 digits of the year. Know your data.

>on 09/13/97 at 07:29 AM, "Kahn, David" <KAHN@tengizchevroil.com> said:
>
>
A program should not accept a future DOB under any circumstances. The
>
program should be able to calculate the reasonable window for any
>
particular date and force confirmation of the defaulted century whenever
>
there is more than one possible solution. I don't think it's reasonable
>
to expect users to key the century part of the date when it's not
>
strictly necessary.

Dave Kahn - TCO, Tengiz, Kazakstan
=========

e-mail:  kahn@tengizchevroil.com    (until September 30th)
         dkahn@cix.compulink.co.uk  (from  October 1st)

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