Re: Internal date format (numerical)

Turkbear (john.g_at_dot.spamfree.com) wrote:
: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org> wrote:

: >David Cressey wrote:
: >
: >> Actually, I believe that Oracle stores about half of its range as "days
: >> before day zero", which I'll take as "negative dates".
: >> But no matter, your point is valid.
: >>
: >> My post should have dealt the the question of "what is "Day zero in Delphi"?
: >>
: >> I wonder what you get if you do, EncodeDate (1899, 12, 30) in Delphi. ?
: >
: >=========================================================================
: >The century and year bytes are in excess-100 notation. The hour, minute,
: >and second are in excess-1 notation. Dates before the Common Era
: >(B.C.E.) are less than 100. The epoch is January 1, 4712 B.C.E. For this
: >date, the century byte is 53 and the year byte is 88. The hour byte
: >ranges from 1 to 24. The minute and second bytes range from 1 to 60. The
: >time defaults to midnight (1, 1, 1).
: >
: >Normally, there is little reason to use the DATE datatype.
: >=========================================================================
: >Source:
: >http://www.cs.umb.edu/cs634/ora9idocs/appdev.920/a97269/pc_04dat.htm

: Do you really believe that
: 'Normally, there is little reason to use the DATE datatype.'..?
: I have always been taught to use the datatype that matches the use of the data..so use DATE for any entry that will be used
: in Date math ( like computing time spans or someone's age)..

: Seems odd not to use it...

I think he meant that there is very little reason to ever use the underlying data formats of this data type. Normally you just pass the date data to an Oracle provided function, and your program then manipulates the result (which is no longer a DATE type).

$0.10

I am curious if and how leap seconds are accomodated? Received on Fri Dec 02 2005 - 15:25:13 CST