Re: Storing dates - revisted...

Bruce,

I see your point and that makes sense. I was just wodering how most non-I.S.
users (who haven't been messing with all of this :-) ) would look at it. I know
after a while it would probably be OK so maybe that's who it should be looked at
(?)...

Is IBM going to stick with the QCENTURY deal or is there a chance that they 
would
include a QWHOLEDATE (MMDDYYYY) sys value ?

Chuck

bvining@VNET.IBM.COM wrote:

> Chuck,
>
> I think you will find that different people have quite different ideas
> on how date output should appear (2-digit vs 4-digit or other similarly
> unambiguous format).  For output intended for a human being to process
> I believe that a 2-digit representation of the year is sufficient for
> 99% of the displays/reports found.  2-digit dates preserve space on the
> interface and are generally sufficient for a user to determine the
> correct century (within the context of the report or display).  Where
> it is considered critical that the user know unambiguously the century
> of interest, then 4-digit years should be used.  An example of this
> would be where DSPJOB shows the current job date as 4-digits (the year
> may make a big difference to a developer debugging a problem) but
> most OS/400 displays continue to use 2-digits (for instance, the date
> a spooled file was created on WRKSPLF).  Note though that this is only
> true because the intended user is a human being.
>
> If the intended user is another program then the date should always be
> output in an unambiguous format.  The API List Spooled Files (QUSLSPL)
> for example uses a CYYMMDD format for date created/opened.
>
> Bruce Vining
>
> >...
> >Which brings up ANOTHER point - what are people doing about the actual
> >"output" ?
> >
> >Including the WHOLE date (i.e. 09/23/1998) or sticking with the "norm"
> >(09/23/98) ?
> >...
> >Chuck
> >
>
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