Re: Importing from Access 2000?

On Tuesday 29 Apr 2003 12:42 pm, Bjorn T Johansen wrote:
> I am trying to convert an Access database to PostgreSQL and the import
> works until it comes to timestamps, then I get error msg like these:
>
> ERROR: Bad timestamp external representation '0000-00-00 01:00:00'
[snip more errors]
> ERROR: Bad timestamp external representation '0000-00-00 19:00:00'
>
> Does anyone have any suggestion on how to overcome this problem?
> (BTW, I am using PostgreSQL 7.3.2 and ODBC)

These don't appear to be valid timestamps, hence the problem. At a guess,
they're not actually being used to store timestamps. AFAICT your options are:

1. Fix the data so that they are valid timestamps.
2. Use some other format more suited for your data (interval?)
3. Store your timestamp values in text in PGSQL (no, I don't like this
either).

Options 1 or 2 are the way to go, but it's difficult to say more without
knowing what the data is supposed to mean. There is no year-zero, month-zero,
day-zero so they can't be timestamps. Let us know what they mean and someone
on the list will be able to suggest a suitable type, I'm sure.

HTH

--
Richard Huxton