Re: Date *HIVAL was Urgent!!! NULLS & ZEROS

There is a null indicator for variables, although I have never used
it.  It has to be checked programmatically though.  Your variable must
still contain valid data for the data type.

Nulls in DB2 are not handled the same way they are in things such
as SQL, ODBC, etc...

If I was in the situation you were in I would, after uploaded the data,
search for all dates of 01/01/1901 and replace them with nulls.  It
seems
that 01/01/1901 is now your null indicator 8-)  I just hope you don't
need to go that far back into history where a data of 01/01/1901 on
your system could be considered actual valid data!

Regards,

Jim Langston

Jim Ackerman wrote:

> I am new to this list, and subscribed just to hear the discussion
> regarding this topic.  We are having problems with 'null' dates being
> set to '0001-01-01' by RPGLE and being interpreted through odbc
> applications as 01/01/1901. Is there no way to store a true null value
> in DB2/400?
>
>      ----- Original Message -----
>      From: Phil Gregory
>      To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
>      Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 4:07 PM
>      Subject: Re: Date *HIVAL was Urgent!!! NULLS & ZEROS
>       On Wed, Dec 22, 1999 at 02:08:39PM -0600, Scott Klement
>      wrote:
>      > Sometimes the values of all zeros, or all nines are used
>      as "special
>      > values" which necessary in some applications -- but not
>      possible with
>      > the date data type.  I don't like using 0001-01-01 or
>      9999-12-31 as
>      > special values for the simple reason that they ARE valid
>      dates!!  I
>      > don't WANT my special values to be valid dates!
>
>      One might argue that special values should be represented
>      out of
>      band--either with NULLs or with other fields in the record.
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