Re: DBCENTURY...DBDATE...DATETIME...let's be clear about this

On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:52:33 +0100, Richard Spitz <richard.spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de> wrote: >Ian Clark wrote: [snip] > >> Indeed, is it a necessity to have DBCENTURY to be Year 2000 compliant? > >That depends on your applications, your forms, the DBDATE environ- >ment variable and your user's habits. As long as the century is always >entered for all dates, i.e. 4-digit years are always used, then you >are fine. The problems arise when dates are only entered with 2-digit >years. How should Informix know which century the user REALLY means? >Mind-reading is one of the features still on the wish-list. > Now...if Informix really want to set themselves apart from the opposition then mind reading might be the answer :-) Actually, I've donw some more reading on this and it would seem that setting DBCENTURY=C would be the answer to my prayers. Most of the data held on our database can be considered of interest if it falls 1 year either side of the current date. That means entering 2 digit years will cause Informix to go to the nearest century which is fine for us. [snip] > >The best way to avoid Y2K-Problems in Informix is to always use >4-digit years in all date fields. [snip] I would agree with that, but at least I know for sure now that having DBCENTURY=C will spare me the necessity for any recoding. Mind you, if I have the time I may well modify the FORMs to request centuries from the user. Thank you for your reply Richard. Cheers, Ian. Tedious 'office speak' part 3: "Let's go scuba in the think tank."