Date Formats within Informix.

Morning everyone, We are using a format for a date of "DDMMMYYYY" in the form files of our system. I have tried unsuccessfully to use this Date format in the DBDATE environment variable, but it does not work, after talking to Informix Tech Support, they said that "DBDATE only supports numeric date types". Our company provides Software to both US and European Customers, and if we could use DBDATE or something similar to control this it would be very helpful. The end result that is required is something like the following :- In US :- AUG061996 In Europe :- 06AUG1996 Informix :- SE ENGINE 5.06 & 4GL 4.14 Any solutions, would be very helpful. Thanks in advance, John Brownlee E-mail address :- 106005.3077@compuserve.com