Date

Dates designate a point in time according to the Gregorian calendar. Historical dates may not follow this calendar. Arithmetic may be performed on dates within the range shown in the table under Data Types. The standard input format for this data type is mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy (automatic conversion is performed between these two formats). Character representations of other date formats shown in the following table are permitted in SQL commands. When included in SQL commands, these special date formats must be enclosed in quotes.

When the XDB Server encounters a string in a location where it expects a date, it determines which of the formats is being used, and performs the internal conversion required. For more information on date formats, see the Options User's Guide. Dates are stored as three 2-byte integers. If the field is specified as NOT NULL WITH DEFAULT, null values will be replaced by current date.

Format Name Date Format Example
ISO International Standards Organization yyyy-mm-dd 1992-03-20
USA IBM USA Standard mm/dd/yyyy 03/20/1992
EUR IBM European Standard dd.mm.yyyy 20.03.1992
JIS Japanese Industrial Standard Christian Era yyyy-mm-dd 1992-03-20
LOCAL Installation-defined any defined format