Re: Query Puzzler After i 7.1 to i 7.2 upgrade.

It is a vendor package and it's in many files identically and it's HIPAA data that truly is life or death related so changing those 00 dates is not happening. The UDF sounds great however, sadly, the old song plays again "we're leaving the platform as soon as we can get gone." So no changes are authorized at this point. They already have a software choice made and the ball is rolling. This upgrade was done only because they MUST be on supported everything due to what they do. Their leaving is due to a combination of a merger and the software vendor's doing a horrible conversion from green to GUI that has made IT's life a living nightmare.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 4/17/2018 7:11 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:

I can understand the logic for converting your input date to string or
number and using that to compare against the file data, and how that may
even be a better performer.
However, my feelings initially lean towards converting the data to true
date fields. And there's nothing stopping you from using strange dates
(like the date of the Massacre at Wounded Knee) for those special dates in
the old system of all sevens or some such thing.
I can understand a large bit of reluctance of doing that, especially if
the dates are in a vendor package. In that case my suggestion would be to
use a UDF to do it instead. Now, how you do the conversion in the UDF is
up to you. The beauty of the UDF is that it can also be buried into a
view so that user's queries become a breeze.


Rob Berendt