Re: Storing birthday data

From: David Garamond <lists(at)zara(dot)6(dot)isreserved(dot)com>
To: Christopher Petrilli <petrilli(at)gmail(dot)com>, pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Storing birthday data
Date: 2004-09-12 05:14:00
Message-ID: 4143DB18.9080307@zara.6.isreserved.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

Christopher Petrilli wrote:
>>What would be the more proper way of storing birthday data? It will be
>>used to send out birthday messages for customers ("Happy 30th birthday,
>>Sam!"). But the date of birth is not necessarily known (in which case,
>>we will only send out "Happy birthday, Sam!").
>>
>>I prefer using the builtin date type instead of three smallints. But I
>>don't like having to arbitrarily set, say, year 1000 AD or 1 BC to
>>represent "unknown year".
>
> Well if you make the column nullable, then you can detect that when
> you retreive it.

Which column? If I use a single date column and set it nullable, I won't
be able to say "date of month and month is known, but year is unknown".

Anyway, I think I'll go with the single date column way.

> You could also, if you don't want that, use a second
> column to indicate that it's been set.

--
dave

In response to

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message michael.wimmer 2004-09-12 10:36:24 Re: unicode and varchar
Previous Message Christopher Browne 2004-09-12 04:43:18 Re: Synchronizing Databases