Doug, I need to store dates where I don't know the year so I chose to select a year which is unlikely to ever be needed as a real date.
I chose to use 1900. I could just as easily have chosen any other year prior to that. As you have sensitive data for some people I would simply pick a year that is obviously wrong and then you can use the column quite normally whilst knowing that, say, 04/03/1000 is a date where the year is intentionally "unknown". It should also be simple enough to allow the entry of some sort of a default value for the year (current, perhaps) along with a checkbox on a form to indicate whether the year should be suppressed before being converted and stored as whatever your chosen unknown value is via an EEP. Alternatively, you can build the date with ADDDAY, ADDMON & ADDYR from three integer values and if the year is left null then use your default. Regards, Alastair. PS: Larry, a fascination method, but why can't you put "dates" in a food processor? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Hamilton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RBG7-L Mailing List" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 12:59 AM Subject: [RBG7-L] - Date with year optional > I have a database with birthdate info. In some cases it is not > necessary to store the year, .i.e some adults prefer not to specifiy > their birth year - which is ok, we just need a list of birthdays in a > date range, like who has April birthdays. But we do need to track birth > year for kids so we know their age and can put them in the correct class. > > Is there some way to store a Date datatype with or without the year? > or: > If no year is specified, then use a dummy year of 0001 or 1000 or > whatever (0000 comes up invalid) and manage those dates in the WHERE > clauses. > or > Use two columns, one for MM/DD and the other for YYYY. They'd probably > have to be text and then programatically concatenate them & convert to > Date datatype. That might get ugly. > > Other ideas? > > I'm leaning towards the dummy year. > > Thanks for your help, > Doug >
