Porting problem from Informix to Postgres...

[sorry, i'm think i'm missing something very simple, so i've not
subscribed to this list... i'll read the answers on web archive, but if
you want put me on CC... thanks!]

On our organization we are porting an old, internally developed app,
that use Informix (SE 7.XX, on a sun box) as database backend and Gupta
Centura Team Developer 1.5.1 as development environment.

Centura uses Informix via a native driver, for postgres we pass along
odbc. Our postgres environment are a set of intel box, loaded with
debian woody, so postgres 7.2.1.

We have solved many problem, i've also make a little perl script that
convert a informix's dbexport dump into a set of file suitable to
import into postgres.

Now we are moving the app... we was happy, because seems that the only
modification needed was to alter some of the more complex query,
because of the difference on informix and postgres sql dialects.

But a big problem now arise: at the very beginning of this app, there
was a bug in handling of date in centura, so the guys circumvent this
converting all date in strings, and handle ``manually''.
Not sufficient, they don't do this with a wrapper function around date
field, but with ``casting'' data in varchar in the selects (with select
... into ...) and only local computation.
It's dumb, i know. ;(

So now, on informix, a set of centura statement like:

Call SqlPrepareAndExecute(hsql,'select dt_fatt from fatture into :una')
Call SqlFetchNext(hsql,err)

make on string/variable :una a date like:

'01-08-2001'

for january 8, 2001, but on postgres we got:

'2001-01-08'

There's a way to alter globally the date format (apart PGDATESTYLE
variable, just tried with no luck), or there's a way to setup query to have
the correct date format?

I've tried to use the mailing list search robots, but looking for
informix on this list (and on -general) make nothing. ;(

Many thanks.

--
dott. Marco Gaiarin GNUPG Key ID: 240A3D66
Associazione ``La Nostra Famiglia'' http://www.sv.lnf.it/
Polo FVG - Via della Bontà, 7 - 33078 - San Vito al Tagliamento (PN)
gaio(at)sv.lnf.it tel +39-0434-842711 fax +39-0434-842797

Urbani, dimissioni please
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=49171