Re: Y2K and six digit date display

[email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (James W Kilgore)]

Glenn,

I hear you,  when we first started on this issue the question came up as to date
data entry and my question was, for how long do you want users keying in an 
entry
two digits? (19xx or 20xx)  For some shops that adds up to a LOT of keystrokes!

What it boiled down to was as long as the underlying file was able to keep dates
properly we would leave the display/print alone.  Otherwise we would be
revisiting the whole display/print issue is a couple of years when century
turnover no longer became an issue.   Talk about job security ;-)

We sat down and looked at the purpose of certain dates.  Birth date ...
definitely 8 digits.  Hire date .... ditto, Invoice date, well a window 
technique
was good enough.  (BTW we store dates since 1991 as 7,0P  as cyymmdd ... before
ILE date data types)  Due date ... can't be before invoice date.  So for
display/print purposes it depended on the nature of the date.  Since we stored
all dates as 7,0P we could add 1900 to the cyy and show 8 digit dates where
appropriate (export to PC via query, etc.) but to fill the standard 80/20 rule
... 80% of the time a 6 digit display/print was just fine.

Where we changed our date validation routines is that we no longer looked at 
year
00 being invalid/ommitted.  Using a window technique we would take a 6 digit
entered date, convert it to 8 digits, convert that to julian, convert the julian
back to gregorian and if the result matched the entered date it was valid.  Then
we might look for appropriateness, like could someone issue us an invoice dated
beyond today's date? Could an entry be made dated outside of a 120 day window?
(Auditor time frame ... or stops erroneous omissions until Sept. 1999)  Could an
entry be made to a closed accounting period? Etc.

Then there are the 20% cases where an 8 digit display/print date may very well 
be
appropriate, if for no other reason then to give a warm and fuzzy feeling until
enough years go by that it just takes up too much landscape.  Then the job
security issues appears again ;-)

James W. Kilgore
email@James-W-Kilgore.com

Glenn Ericson wrote:

> <<snip<
>
> I know  a lot of words to tell you that  8 digits  is NOT  always the  best
> solution, NOT always accepted easily, nor implemented  without infringing
> on real estate  changes.

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