At 12:29 AM 16/7/97 -0500, Orycteropus afer wrote:
>Further on the topic of dates in automated systems:
>
>In addition to the considerations raised recently regarding accession
>numbers and the year 2000, dates in general should be of concern to
>automated system users.  Far too many automated systems define the fields
>used to record dates (acquisition dates, dates of manufacture, conservation
>dates, movement dates, etc.) as what is called a "date" type field internal
>to the database management system.
>
>This is almost always a BIG mistake.  .....
>
>The more sophisticated way to handle dates in an automated system is to
>define fields that will carry date information as "character" type fields......

I'll second the Aardvark's suggestions and add that if the information in
the character field is entered as numerals in the order of year, month, and
day (preferably with some sort of standard separators to insure ease of
reading), easy sorting in chronologic order is possible.

Art Harris

Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum
University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX  79968-0519
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http://www.utep.edu/leb     http://www.utep.edu/museum