Subject: Appeal for Clarity

From: [email-masked] (John Roddick)
Date: 07 Jun 1993 11:30:04 +0930

Appeal for Clarity

We need to standardise our method of specifying dates in the benchmark. 
Half the world would interpret 1/4/88 at January 4th while the other half
as April 1st.  While it's sometimes obvious which is correct (such as
31/1/88 and 2/29/88) sometimes it's not.

I suggest we standardise by using "Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug,
Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec" in the standard form dd-mmm-yyyy where

        dd   = day of month
        mmm  = Alpha month as above
        yyyy = year (we'ld better get use to four digit years now!)

This is not to say that a good query language couldn't accept other
formats, just that the above is unambiguous which is what we should be
aimimg at in a benchmark.

John.
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