Date Display.

[Jones Allen (Van)]

We are using Oracle with a Powerhouse application that disallows nulls.
Powerhouse programs will let us enter "zero" dates, but Oracle's SQL
commands won't:  after all, zero is not a valid date.  In SQL select
statements, Oracle does it's best to interpret the resulting bit-pattern
(or whatever it is) as a date, but it's not a real date and neither is
it null.  Powerhouse is oblivious to all this and carries on normally,
zero dates and all.  We're not using languages other than powerhouse, so
it doesn't seem to matter, but it might if we used SQL, or other
programming languages.  Ideally, we should re-write the application to
use nulls correctly.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Stewart, Mark [SMTP:MStewart@VICTORIA.COM]
> Sent:	Thursday, August 06, 1998 11:26 AM
> To:	'Rod Hulme'; powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
> Subject:	RE: Date Display.
> 
> Why wouldn't PowerHouse treat "null" value and the "0" value
> different?
> They are different.  Just like 1 and 2.  Null values are
> unpredictable.  I
> had subscreen in the past that had data expression errors.  I
> specified
> noitems and it fixed the problem kind of.  I thought at the time that
> NULL
> values where the problem.  I had to create a QTP and select if date =
> null -
> item date final 0 and the problem went away totally since I cleared
> out any
> old records that still had a null.  Zeros values seem to be more easy
> to
> maintain in my opinion.
> 
> Mark Stewart
> Consultant
> OpenVMS Alpha V7.1-1H1
> Oracle Rdb    V7.0-1
> PH 4GL        7.10.F4
> 
> 
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