Re: Month, day, year fields

[Rich Duzenbury <rduz-midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 14:57, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Is there any valid reason to design new files with these fields separated 
> out, in the physical?  Versus using a true date field?  The only 
> difficulty I see with a true date field is that you either have to learn 
> how to code a null indicator on your field, or use a default date.
> 
> Rob Berendt
In fact, I think that now the database supports date and time fields,
there are few valid reasons for keeping them as separate fields, re: my
SQL nightmare unfolding while trying to do a date selection on a
three-field date.  They are even a pain in query/400.

A few potential issues I can think of to examine:
What about older machine architectures that perhaps don't have date
field support?  If you work on older releases, does the older release
have a date field type?

Some older tools that work with database tables probably can't support
date fields, say, perhaps FMTDTA (I'm not sure).  What about any
in-house tools you might have written that examine numeric or alpha
data?  Can they support a date data type without significant re-work?

What about data extraction?  Do ODBC and JDBC data sources work OK with
AS/400 date fields?

--
Regards,
Rich

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