Re: OT Re: DATE fields and queries

[Rodney Harris]

** I actually use them a lot. I even like them more than the old date/time fields for many uses. There are some things that I have learnt the hard way about them though and they need to be addressed in future versions of the AR system.   Good things: You can easily do arithmetic on days, weeks, months & years. There is a set of useful date functions including dateadd, datepart, datenum and datediff The date field is stored as the number of days since 4713 BC and this can be exploited via in run if conditions and the like.  Eg ‘date1’ > ‘date2’ + 7. (Date time fields are stored on the database as the number of seconds since 1970 and can be similarly exploited) Date conditions such as ‘date’ <= “1/1/2006” are easier and more intuitive for users as there is no time component to worry about   Bad Things $DATE$ doesn’t work as a date in Australia and I suspect that is because we use a non US date format. The V7 guide purports otherwise on p204, Appendix A I need to use the _expression_ MONTH($DATE$) + “/” + DAY($DATE$) + YEAR($DATE$) to set a temporary char field and then use the temp char field to set the date field. This is long winded and not documented. There should be a single step conversion between date/time and date fields. At least by doing this the date conversion is guaranteed to be format independent. I would prefer a calendar style dialog for date entry and the ability to get rid of the BC option would be good too. Conversion errors are not reported – we just get lots of 4713 BC dates floating around stuffing things up.     Hopefully BMC will address the date conversion issue in the next release. Once this is sorted out I think date fields will become as common as date/time fields in Remedy apps. At the moment because I need to add and subtract months and days a lot the little bit of pain on conversion is well worth it.   I haven’t seen the new Version 7 apps yet so I would be interested to know how they deal with the date conversion issue. Do they work outside of US date format?     Rod Harris CMS Asset Solutions 23-25 O’Connell Street Sydney 2000 Australia From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Aaron Keller Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 4:19 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: OT Re: DATE fields and queries   Well, I’ll tell you I won’t be using them anymore.  They’re a pain in my ARS!   I used a Date type for a ‘Birth Date’ field, since many people here have a birthday prior to the beginning of Remedy Time (1/1/1970).    But now I’m kind of wishing I had just used a char field with a lot of workflow to format and parse it for the age calculations.   Besides the problem I mention below, there is the Web dialog popup for the field, which lists year first, then month and day, and includes a check box for BC.  Granted that’s fine for most of the world, but around here the users were confused to no end.  (After all, who has a B.C. birthday?)  And to change that popup, I had to hack a _javascript_ file (ar_date_popup.jsp)   -Aaron * Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Jason Miller Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 12:49 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: OT Re: DATE fields and queries   ** Just wondering how many people out there are using Date fields other then what is OOTB? I have found I usually run into some kind of issue when I use them (granted I haven't used them much since they were first added to ARS). About the only thing I use them for currently is to put a nice looking date in an email (users don't care much to see 09/22/06 17:58:15). Jason __20060125_______________________This posting was submitted with HTML in it___ __20060125_______________________This posting was submitted with HTML in it___