Focal Point
[TECHNIQUE] There Are Dates, and Then There Are Dates

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June 19, 2013, 10:37 AM
Kerry
[TECHNIQUE] There Are Dates, and Then There Are Dates
There Are Dates, and Then There Are Dates
by Art Greenhaus

Anyone who has ever looked at the various format options for fields has noticed multiple date- oriented formats. And surely you’ve noticed there are also numerous subroutines dealing with extraction and conversion of date fields. Have you ever wondered why there are so many format and routines? Well, here's why.

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June 19, 2013, 12:41 PM
njsden
Wow! Excellent document. It's so cool to see how it all begun and what needed to be done in the FOCUS language to overcome the technical limitations at that time.

It seems so easy nowadays to deal with DATE, DATE/TIME, TIMESTAMPS, INTERVALS and so forth as they as just "there" to be used in just about any piece of database or reporting tool, that dealing with I6YMD or A8YYMD fields and expressions sometimes seemed to me like nothing but an annoying but required exercise in many instances.

Now I understand much better why that's there, especially when no matter what technological advances we enjoy today, there are still countless installations running on good ol' and reliable mainframe systems and [Web]FOCUS should still be able to support them while also embracing the "new stuff".

Great, great document.

Thanks very much Kerry for sharing and congratulations to "the FocWizard" for putting together such an interesting piece of information. Much appreciated.

- Neftali.



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