Re: JBA date manipulation with DB2 Query manager

[Larry Bolhuis <lbolhui@xxxxxxx>]

We have been doing this since early S/36 days. We add a couple
additional fields to this generated file: fiscal year, fiscal month
(or period), work day flag (0/1) and any other date related fields. 
This makes reporting for a period a snap since this file is linked
into nearly every query anyway.
 
 - Larry

> Under the heading "crude but effective" is an approach used successfully by
> a client of mine. Write a one-off program to generate a file of dates. The
> program steps day by day from an arbitrary start date to an arbitrary end
> date. Make sure that the range encompasses all the dates you will
> realistically use. Each record will contain all the date formats you are
> likely to use. So you might have CYYMMDD, Julian, absolute (day number
> relative to an arbitrary starting point), day of week number, day of week
> name, year number, week number, day number, MM/DD/YYYY, short display
> format, long display format, etc, etc, etc.
> 
> Your queries can now join to this file by the CYYMMDD (or any) field and
> retrieve all the other formats of the date. The absolute date can be used
> for arithmetic. Subtract one date from another to get the days between
> them, or add a number of days to any date then retrieve the result in any
> format.

-- 
Larry Bolhuis         | What do you want to reload today?
Arbor Solutions, Inc  | 
(616) 451-2500        | Two rules to success in life:
lbolhui@ibm.net       | 1. Never tell people everything you know.
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