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Jason's example may work but pay attention to his caveats. Instead, I
recommend using a UDF or User Defined Function, to get this done. Your
UDF should handle your corporate policies as to how to handle dates that
are invalid, stored as null, etc. You may not use nulls at this time but
with a UDF you built it in now and not have to worry about the negative
ramifications in the future. Alan Campin has some date routines out there
on the internet somewhere which are quite useful.
Doing this will also reduce possible debugging and what now in all the
places which use these numeric dates. For example, if you use
SELECT *
FROM oldtable join newtable
on newDate = NumToDate(oldDateAsNbr)
The chances of that getting a wrong apostrophe or whatnot reduce
dramatically.

Now, there is also a performance consideration. If the data is
overwhelmingly stored in the numeric date format it may behoove you to try
SELECT *
FROM oldtable join newtable
on oldDateAsNbr = DateToNum(newDate)
Using the inverse of NumToDate, DateToNum. This may take advantage of a
key on date (if it exists).

I had trouble trying this:
CREATE INDEX ROB/oldtablel01
ON ROB/OLDTABLE
(numtodate(OLDDATEASNBR) ASC)

But I could get this to work:
CREATE INDEX ROB/oldtablel01
ON ROB/OLDTABLE
(DATE(SUBSTR(CHAR(oldDateAsNbr),1,4)||'-'||
SUBSTR(CHAR(oldDateAsNbr),5,2)||'-'||
SUBSTR(CHAR(oldDateAsNbr),7,2) ))

Rob Berendt

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