Re: Standards question on edited fields

From: LX-i (lxi0007_at_netscape.net)
Date: 01/17/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 20:05:28 -0600

Judson McClendon wrote:
> "LX-i" <lxi0007@netscape.net> wrote:
>
>>We have a field that is 9 characters - a 2-digit day, a 3-character
>>month, and a 4-digit year. It's defined as follows...
>>
>>01 My-Date.
>> 03 My-Day Pic 9(02).
>> 03 My-Month Pic X(03).
>> 03 My-Year Pic 9(04).
>
>
> Why would you store a date in such a way?

Who said I was storing it?

> Dates in that format would
> not sort correctly, and it seems you would not present such a format to
> a human directly without editing, as your question demonstrates. I can't
> see a reason for storing a date in such a format, because it would need
> to be modified for either internal computer use or external human use,
> making it useless in its current form. Is there a valid reason for this, or
> is it just sloppy design? :-)

I can't think of a military-format date in our database. However, being
in the military, we have many requirements to display dates this way
(today would be "16 Jan 04" most places, "16 Jan 2004" in a few). We
either display the current date, or convert a data out of the database,
which is usually stored in YYYY-MM-DD (relational) or YYYYDDD (DMS).

So, it's not a sloppy design at all - and there is a valid reason. 

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