RE: Allow *ZERO in a date (and timestamp) field? IBM? -- MIDRANGE-L

A compromise is to convert to date data-types and test against *LOVAL where
you are now testing against *ZEROS.  Still requires you to change code, but
swapping *LOVAL for *ZEROS is the least impact, without getting into all the
complexities of *NULL.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Goodbar, Loyd (AFS-Water Valley) [SMTP:LGoodbar@afs.bwauto.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 10:19 AM
> To:   'midrange-l@midrange.com'
> Subject:      RE: Allow *ZERO in a date (and timestamp) field? IBM?
>
> For a "from-scratch" application, I agree this is how it should be done.
> One
> problem is most RPG programmers have not encountered nullable fields
> before.
> Can/does RPG/III support null capable fields? I know RPG/IV has %nulind to
> check against. Convert all programs to RPG/IV, recompile with
> ALWNULL(*USRCTL), and bracket date operations with %nulind. I agree
> technically that one shouldn't use a "real" date to represent no date, but
> with as much legacy code with 6,0 or 8,0 numeric with 0 for no date, I
> think
> the "0001-01-01" is reasonable.
>
> Loyd
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr. [mailto:rbruceh@attglobal.net]
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 9:00 AM
> To: midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: Allow *ZERO in a date (and timestamp) field? IBM?
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "William A.(Tony) Corbett" <corbett@ASRESOURCES.COM>
> To: "MIDRANGE-L@midrange. com" <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 9:05 AM
> Subject: Allow *ZERO in a date (and timestamp) field? IBM?
>
>
> > If the "date field restrictions" could be eased up to allow only valid
> dates
> > (as it is now) OR zero in a date field, this would help us a lot.
> >
> > I am currently having to using a packed field to store dates on the
> > db, primarily due to this restriction.  Oftentimes, I need to allow a
> > zero in
> a
> > date field, and current restrictions will not allow this.
>
>
> while I understand the wish, it is not likely to ever be changed. And I
> think "help us" is a key mentality here... it sure won't help the
> developers
> that follow us.
>
> One should never use a value to represent a "no value" condition and
> that's
> what you are doing. A null value is what is used to represent that
> condition. Since nulls are viable in date fields, you would/should convert
> your dates and null those dates that are zero.
>
> And, yes, application code would all have to change then too.
>
> ===========================================================
> R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
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