How can I represent dates before 100AD in Access 2003?

M

Mike Marchant

I regularly need to use dates prior to 100 AD, and very often BC.

Are there any add-ons, or patches, or code modules, that handly this
requirement for Access 2003?

Much Olbliged
 
W

Wayne-I-M

Hi Mike

I have never thought about this and there are almost certainly better ways
to do this but - as a quick guess - you could have have another field (yes/no
or combo set to AD/BC). Use a query to concencate the date field
format[Date],"someformat") with the (&) BC/AD or iif yes/no=-1,"AD","BC"

Hope that make sense and helps a little.
 
L

Larry Linson

Mike Marchant said:
I regularly need to use dates prior to 100 AD, and very often BC.

Are there any add-ons, or patches, or code modules, that handly this
requirement for Access 2003?
Click to expand...

It would seem very, very unusual to have a month, day, and year for a date
prior to 100 CE.

Of course you should also take into consideration the calendar changes that
occurred after that date, so that Access dates which are based on the
current 'Gregorian' calendar, only represent "what the date would have been
had the Gregorian calendar been in use at the time" for dates before the
changeover.

I suggest you use an Integer or Long Integer for the year, and do not imply
a date precision that you do not, in fact, have. If you do this, you only
have to be concerned with the discontinuity resulting from there being no
"year zero."

If, on the other hand, you have accurate, precise dates for 100 CE and
earlier, accept my apology for assuming otherwise.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
 
J

John W. Vinson

You could use another base for the zero year of the calendar - have the dates
offset by 1000 years, or use Anno Conditae Romae, or the 4004BCE creation of
the world date, or the Hebrew calendar. You can use some simple calculations
to display (say) 5/21/418 as 5/21/582 BCE.

As Larry says, the dates in your database may or may not have an accurate
relationship with dates in the real world, but that depends on your problem
space!

John W. Vinson [MVP]
 
L

Larry Linson

John W. Vinson said:
As Larry says, the dates in your database may or
may not have an accurate relationship with dates
in the real world, but that depends on your
problem space!
Click to expand...

I hadn't been thinking along those lines, but a database to keep a timeline
for a novel about that era might include month and day. On the other hand,
maybe the date problems are why I haven't heard about anyone's time machine
functioning properly.

Larry
 
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