Date Format

[Deskin, Bob]

If your dates are currently PHDATE and are DATE SIZE 6, using the new PHDATE
format may be an option. All you would do is change your ELEMENT to DATE
SIZE 8. As for the system option CENTURY INCLUDED|EXCLUDED, you'll need to g
oto INCLUDED if you want to use any PowerHouse date function over multiple
centuries or outside of the DEFAULT CENTURY.

The PHDATE format uses 7 bits for the year. Normally, in the size 6 or
century excluded form, the year runs from 0 to 99 and is the year within the
DEFAULT CENTURY. For example, if the default century is 19 and the year is
98, then you're in 1998. However, if you change the default century to 20,
it's now 2098.

7 bits can have values from 0 to 127, so we assumed that it was the number
of years after 1900. The century include PHDATE can have a range from Jan 1,
1900 to Dec 31, 2027. And you don't have to change any of your existing data
assuming all the existing years are within the 1900's.

Bob Deskin              
Senior Product Advisor, Application Development Tools, Cognos Inc.
bob.deskin@cognos.com (613) 738-1338 ext 4205 FAX: (613) 228-3149
3755 Riverside Drive P.O. Box 9707 Stn. T, Ottawa ON K1G 4K9 CANADA


-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Rosenblatt [mailto:jrosenblatt@i2sworld.com]
Sent: Friday, April 30, 1999 1:13 PM
To: Powerh-L (E-mail)
Subject: Date Format


I am sure this is something I should know but I don't, so I am asking. I am
running v 8.09 soon to be 8.19 on an HP with MPE 5.5.
I have KSAM (indexed) files as part of my dictionary. I want the dates to be
in MMDDYYY. There are dates with the following item descriptions:
Element A-EXPIRE-DT &
        Date       Size 6 &
        Format MMDDYY &
        Separator "/" &
        Heading "Expire^Date^--------" &
        Label "Date Expire" &
        Datatype PHDATE Size 2

I need to change the Date size to 8. What about the PHDATE Size 2? Does that
need to changed? As I understand it PHDATE is the number of days from some
set date. If that is true then does the size matter? Would a description
that looked like this work:
Element A-EXPIRE-DT &
        Date       Size 8 &
        Format MMDDYYYY &
        Separator "/" &
        Heading "Expire^Date^--------" &
        Label "Date Expire" &
        Datatype PHDATE Size 2

Do I need to use the CENTURY INCLUDED clause? TIA for any help you can give
me.


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