Re: Year 2000

[cmassoglia@xxxxxxxxxxx (Charlie Massoglia)]

John, I couldn't agree with you more.  What will prevent people from
investing the time to convert to date data types will be procrastination.
If they wait too long, they will be forced to use numeric fields because
that will generally take less time than converting to date data types.

>RE:    Re: Year 2000
>
><SNIP>
>
>>Doing a Y2K conversion AND converting to ILE is a bit ambitious, don't you
>>think?  It was my understanding that there were some performance problems
>>with the date data types at one point, is this still the case?
>>Regards!
>>Dean Asmussen
>
>To heck with the performance issue.  I bet the files you have to day, You
>(and more importantly) and your users will be using well beyond the year
>2000.  They will be using(or wishing they could) Date type functions 
>(durations, etc) even MUCH more 2-3 years from now than they do today.  
>
>What if IBM 2 years from now made the date performance FANTASTIC.
>You wouldn't be able to justify converting then could you. 
>The whole Y2K issue is a testimony to the great forsight and planning
>us IS professionals have had.  By implementing 8 byte numerics we 
>(IMHO) are continuing in that grand tradition.
>
>IF you don't make them native date & time data types now you NEVER will.
>We started using them on V2R3 even though we had to use them in RPGIII. 
>When we got RPGIV guess what,  Alot of our data base was ready for it.
>We didn't think about the pain of RPGIII, we thanked our selves for actually
>PLANNING ahead.  The users who use Query/400 to Slice/Dice THEIR data
>and then use file transfer to put it in a graph tool on the PC
>also thanked us for the ability of doing Date math.
>
>ITS NOT JUST OUR DATA anymore.
>
>Let me see a user subtract (easily without converting to virtual fields)
>one 8 byte numeric date from another using Query/400 to come up with a 
>date duration.
>
>End of Soap Box.
>


Charlie Massoglia, Massoglia Technical Consulting, Inc.
PO Box 1065, Okemos, MI 48854, USA
517-676-9700  Fax: 517-676-1006  EMAIL: cmassoglia@voyager.net


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