From: | Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to> |
---|---|
To: | christoph(dot)dellavalle(at)goetheanum(dot)ch |
Cc: | pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org |
Subject: | Re: variable date precision |
Date: | 2003-10-16 17:11:25 |
Message-ID: | 20031016171125.GC28009@wolff.to |
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Thread: | |
Lists: | pgsql-novice |
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.
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