1 Reply by DaveSlade

  • DaveSlade
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  • Registered: 15-05-2006
  • Posts: 332

Re: Date Type

My understanding of the Date Type "U" was that it would be used for an unknown date. To my mind this should populate the Vague_Date_From and vague_Date_to fields with nothing. However our database has about 50 records (imported from CCW) that have Vague_Date_From and Vague_Date_to values of 30th December 1999.
I presume that this a quirk of the database rather than a major problem, and I'm pretty sure from the data that the dates should be 'unknown', but why has Recorder added this as the date? I would understand if it were 31st December 1899 as this is 'day zero' in data type terms, but why day '36524'?

Dave Slade
Senior IT & Records Officer,
15 Talbot Road, Talbot Green, Pontyclun, CF72 8AD
www.sewbrec.org.uk, www.sewbrecord.org.uk

2 Reply by Sarah Shaw

  • Sarah Shaw
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  • Registered: 23-06-2006
  • Posts: 267

Re: Date Type

Hi Dave

I'm not sure what has happened here - you are right in thinking that records with a date of 'unknown' should be stored with the vague_date_start and vague_date_end fields '0' and with a vague_date_type of 'U'. Also the start date and end date for each vague date are stored as integers representing the number of days since 30/12/1899.

I've just checked adding a record of unknown using V6.10 and this does populate the vague date fields correctly - it might be that attempting to enter another date has caused these few anomalies but this could be difficult to track down.

I've just tried a few others such as ' - 1999' and 'December 1999' and everything appears to be ok so I'm inclined to think this a database issue rather than software - unless we have similar reports from others.

Best wishes,

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC