I have a requirement wherein a date in a Focus database has till now just been YYMD, but the new requirement is to record the time also.

These are smartdates so I'm guessing that all I have to do is change the display characteristics in the MAS file to HYYMDS, but I thought I'd get an opinion here before messing things up ....

This message has been edited. Last edited by: George Patton,

George,

I would treat it like any other database. Create a new field for your Time/Date field. You will need to update whatever processes update that field to now provide the date/time to the new field. Then migrate the old data from the one field into the other.

Remember that whatever is populating that field is doing so with a smart date as well. So just changing the data type in the FOCUS table won't be enough. You will most likely receive errors for trying to put a smart date into a HYYMDS field.

Smart dates are internally 4-byte binary signed integers. I believe H (date-time) formats are a different size and internal layout.

You can use rebuild dump + rebuild load for most of the heavy lifting, but you'll need to run a Modify to set the timestamp in the converted record instances (HOLD record keys and date field(s) before the format conversion, and run a Modify from Hold after).

Eric / Jack:

Thank you both for your comments. Receiving advice from the past masters of the art is a pleasure. Having it confirmed that it isn't a super-simple exercise is a bit of a pain, but that's OK.

George