Re: variable date precision

On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 08:07:01 +0200,
christoph(dot)dellavalle(at)goetheanum(dot)ch wrote:
> hi there
>
> i've got a problem with a field set up as type date. now we discovered that we have to allow not only full dates (2003-10-16) but also dates where we have only a month or even a year. we see that it is not a very good practice to use the first of the month because it is ambiguous. on the other side, date does not allow entries like "2003-10-00".
>
> this db already contains quite a few records, so i'm not really keen on changing the data-type. nevertheless, i'm interested in the theoretically correct solution as much as in a practical one, since it is not the first time i've come across this problem.
>
> any suggestions are very welcome...

How are you going to use the incomplete dates?

When you say only a month do you mean that there is also no year specified?

One option is to pick an approximate day within a month and/or month within
a year. Another option is to use another column which indicates a precision
for the date.