RE: To Date or Not to Date... that is the question

Thanks Charles,
I'll have to give that a try - we are a mixed shop both ILE RPG and ILE
COBOL.
My RPG programmers always define their date fields as date and that has
been a problem with a few ILE COBOL routines.
I did not know there was a solution but I do know that ILE COBOL does
not appear to handle these natively.


John Arnold
(301) 354-2939


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Wilt, Charles
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:13 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: To Date or Not to Date... that is the question

John,

Guess again....

"Date, Time, and Timestamp Fields
Date, time, and timestamp fields are brought into your program only if
you specify the *DATETIME option of the CRTCBLPGM CVTOPT parameter, or
the DATETIME option of the PROCESS statement. Without one of these
options, these fields become FILLER items.

Date, time, and timestamp fields are brought in as fixed-length
character fields. Your program can perform any valid character
operations on them."

That is the same method OPM RPG uses.

I'll assume that ILE COBOL handle date data types natively just like ILE
RPG.

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John Arnold (MFS)
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:04 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: To Date or Not to Date... that is the question

The Date format is not supported in COBOL400.
If you need to use a file in both RPG and COBOL apps, the decimal 8 is

necessary.


John Arnold
(301) 354-2939


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:54 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: To Date or Not to Date... that is the question

I go back and forth on this internally and decided to ask the experts.
Without starting another political battle (like that won't happen),
when defining a date field, is it better to define it as a date or as
a decimal 8?

What I see is:

Benefits to date:
* SQL selections on date are simple
* can easily use data BIFS

Benefits to decimal 8:
* Can have a "zero" date, a date typed field needs to be 0001-01-01
* date BIFS a bit harder to use (but not much)

What is your preference and why?

--
Mike Wills
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewills
Blog - http://mikewills.name
Podcasts - http://podcastmike.com
--
This is the RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries (RPG400-L) mailing
list To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe,
unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.


--
This is the RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries (RPG400-L) mailing
list To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe,
unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.

This e-mail transmission contains information that is intended to be
confidential and privileged. If you receive this e-mail and you are not
a named addressee you are hereby notified that you are not authorized to
read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this communication without the
consent of the sender and that doing so is prohibited and may be
unlawful. Please reply to the message immediately by informing the
sender that the message was misdirected. After replying, please delete
and otherwise erase it and any attachments from your computer system.
Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated.

--
This is the RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries (RPG400-L) mailing
list To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe,
unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at
http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.