Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Was Re: Date will not format or sort when imported into calc (ods) - Databases vs Spreadsheets

On 09/12/2012 01:23 AM, JAMES MAJESKI wrote:
> Two digit years have always been a problem. I always presume that the use two
> digit years was obsolete after the Y2K publicity, but bad habits continue.
> We are no longer in the era of eighty column punch cards, so there is no
> excuse for two digit years.
>
> ISO8601 is the international standard, so it is not ambiguous. In other
> formats, using four digit years and month names are not ambiguous no matter
> the element order. Any other formats require a time consuming examination
> for clues as to element order or an explanation from the source.
>
> My input data may be in any of the formats. Once I determine the order of
> the elements and resolved two digit years, I can easily convert to ISO8601.
In a spreadsheet a date year is a display choice, the actual date is
stored as a number relative to a 0 day. In a database, however, it
depends on how the field is defined: text or Date/Datetime. AFAIK all
Date/Datetime entries require a 4 digit year. The problem with a
database is it may use a location specific order (Imm/dd/yyyy for US or
dd/mm/yyyy otherwise) for entry and storage.

-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


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