Understanding Your Data Model › Using Fields › ISO Date › External Format

External Format

The external format for DT# fields and the valid range for entering dates depends on the input edit code you select for the field.

• If the edit code has a 4-digit-year format (YYYY), the range of dates you can enter is the same as the internal format range, namely, January 1, 1801 to December 31, 2199.
• If the edit code has a 2-digit year format (YY), the range of dates you can enter is restricted to a ‘floating’ hundred years (00-99) starting from the year specified by the YCUTOFF model value. The cut-off year can be any year from within the range of 1900-1999 and its current value is retrieved at run time. The shipped default is 1940. In this case a year greater than or equal to 40 is assumed to be in the 20th century; a year less than 40 is assumed to be in the 21st century.

The external format for DT# fields for both input and output also depends on the setting of the Date Generation Validation (YDATGEN) and Date Format (YDATFMT) model values. It can be *MDY, *DMY, or *YMD. Note

Note: To enter, display, or print date fields with a four-digit-year external format, such as MM/DD/YYYY, you need to change the edit codes to either / or – .

The following table shows how the edit codes and the settings of the YDATGEN and YDATFMT model values affect the way that dates are displayed and printed.

Note: This table also applies to user-defined 8-digit date fields that have field type 'DT8'.

Note: Due to limitations within DDS, you cannot produce this result at run time with YDATGEN set to *VRY and YDATFMT set to *YMD. To display or print digit years in *YMD format you need to set YDATGEN to *YMD.