Re: Y2K conversion process

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses.

I should point out that except for this one field, everything else is Y2K compliant. Any real date in the Oracle database uses the Oracle date datatype.

The database is concerned with publications, that are put out on a yearly basis. Since this is the first and only year that the database has existed, there has only been one year in it: 00, or 2000 (for the upcoming year).

The main reason for conversion is that we will soon be getting the data for the 2001 publications. The database would still work with 2 and 4 year digits. But, one smart project leader wants to do it correctly.

So one could argue that this is not a Y2K issue at all, but a DBA or data design issue. If the data in question was the STATE field, and some of tables had only 2 digits, and other tables had the whole word, we would have pretty much the same conversion issues.

So, as far as the process that I initially thought of:

• change all the processes so that they use the substr() function, ensuring that ALL fields with the varchar2 year field are either 2 or 4 digits.
• change the table structures, and the data in them, from 2 to 4 digits.
• change all the processes again so that they read the 4 digit fields in the tables in the normal manner.

does anyone have any experience that they could share?

Regards,

Argosy

> We have a number of fields in our Oracle database concerning
> the year: AD_ED, EDITION_YEAR, etc. Varchar2.
> In some tables, they are 4 digits, but most are 2 digits.

> There are no real calculations done on these fields
> (ie. YEAR + 1)

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Before you buy. Received on Tue Dec 28 1999 - 07:49:33 CST