Instead of 10-24-95 or 24 Oct 1994, why not 19951024. Dates are then numbers and can be searched with greater than (after), equal to (same date), and less than (before) operators. You can't do that easily with mixed/embedded alphanumeric names and you can't do it if the numeric date is written in day-month-year order, ie. 24101995 is greater than 01012000, but it comes before the new millenium.