On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Matthew D Moss wrote:
> >the concept i wanted to push was that eventually the implementation
> >behind the API's will be updated.. in 2031 they will say.. ok..
> >we can now make the date structure bigger.. :)) what is 1 more byte
> >when we have 1Gb onboard?
>
> The algorithm/implementation is the easy part. What happens with all those
> databases that store DateType information when the API (or DataType
> structure) changes? Not only do you need a recompile now, but you need to
> write/use conversion routines and be able to identify which databases have
> been converted and which ones haven't.
it is up to the programmer to ensure that they store the information
in a manner which is portable. if i was to write data base information
to disk (memory in this case) - i would store it in a way which i
could understand what it meant.
if was writing a database that stores information about dates, my data
structures will support every date.. when i load or save them i convert
them to the required format.
for example, my database could store "2099-12-31" as a string, and
when i load it.. i convert it into a DateType. when i save it, i
would convert from a DateType back to a string.
y2k is a programmer error.. if they never stored them as 2-digits,
we would not have this problem..
space should never be an issue at a design level.. only at the
implementation level.
az.
--
Aaron Ardiri
Lecturer http://www.hig.se/~ardiri/
University-College i G�vle mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
SE 801 76 G�vle SWEDEN
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