Re: Week_ISO and the last week of 2008

Hi John,
mm-dd-yy is not a commonly understood format.
It is only understood in the USA.
For the USA market we specifically had to add to our UserPreferences entries for dates and amounts so these could be presented in the *USA format because persons in the USA miss interprete dates (Like the whole worlds does when these are not presented in *ISO format).
See: http://www.iso.org/iso/support/faqs/faqs_widely_used_standards/widely_used_standards_other/date_and_time_format.htm
When does the USA becomes a part of the world??
The world is *ISO and Metric and is able to count to 24 when it is about time.

Eduard Sluis.

________________________________
From: Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 6, 2009 5:55:59 PM
Subject: RE: Week_ISO and the last week of 2008

John,

It's all a matter of preference, of course.  Personally, when writing (letters. Documentation, etc.), I use dd name-of-month year (6 January 2009), but in notation form (1-6-09) I stick with the commonly understood/recognizable mm-dd-yy.

That said, when I took this job, I discovered that the software contractor that made their system y2k-compliant had made *ALL date fields (input and output) ccyymmdd, and told 'em to "you'll get used to it."  All because the dork couldn't take the time to write a couple of simple routines to flip the dates (i.e., display mmddyy, store in table ccyymmdd). 

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email:  jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of McKown, John
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 3:40 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Week_ISO and the last week of 2008

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of CRPence
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 3:28 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Week_ISO and the last week of 2008

McKown, John wrote:

Given your email address, I'd guess that you are using the
European date format instead of the US one. If your curious,
that means you should try:

select week_iso(date('29/12/08')) from sysibm.sysdummy1

    Rather than trying another variant [non-standard & ambiguous
two-digit year] date-format based on locale, it is IMO always best to
choose a standard[s] format such as the *ISO date-format, for the
specification of any date literal.  That is, the original
given example
would have been best, coded to avoid ambiguity [and thus
mapping errors]
using:

    select week_iso(date('2008-12-29')) from sysibm.sysdummy1

Regards, Chuck
--

Agreed! Wish I could get our users used to ISO formatted dates. But,
then Moses wrote dates in mm/dd/yy and if it's good enough for him, it's
good enough for us!

First job I worked at, in the late 1970s, I produced a date and time
using yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss where the hours were in "military" time
(00-23) and the date & time set to GMT ("Zulu time"). I was nearly
lynched.

--
John McKown
Systems Engineer IV
IT

Administrative Services Group

HealthMarkets(r)
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(817) 255-3225 phone * (817)-961-6183 cell
john.mckown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * www.HealthMarkets.com

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