HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Coding Considerations
The following list provides helpful reminders when you are using
date/time functions:
* Input functions require leading zeros to match the fixed format of
an element. (Z is not supported.)
* For all date/time functions, when you provide only some elements
of the complete format in your format specification, any
unspecified elements are filled with default values.
* Arithmetic operations are possible with functions of type INTEGER.
* The length of the data cannot exceed the length of the format
specification for that data. The maximum size of a format
specification is 72 bytes.
* Because LIKE works only with CHAR and VARCHAR values, if you want
to use LIKE with date/time data, you must first convert it to CHAR
or VARCHAR. For this you can use the TO_CHAR conversion function.
* MIN, MAX, COUNT can be used with any DATE/TIME column type. SUM,
AVG can be used with INTERVAL data only.
* Do not specify an indicator variable as a parameter of a date/time
function used in the select list of a query.
* When using the ADD_MONTHS function, if the addition of a number of
months (positive or negative) would result in an invalid day, the
day field is set to the last day of the month for the appropriate
year, and a warning is generated indicating the adjustment.