Sybase 12.4.2 Date Option, Substitution of Null or blank characters, Specifying the Date Format

Converting data on insertion

Substitution of NULL or blank characters

Adaptive Server IQ supports zero-length CHAR and VARCHAR data. If the length of a CHAR or VARCHAR cell is zero and the cell is not NULL, you get a zero-length cell.

For all other data types, if the length of the cell is zero, Adaptive Server IQ inserts a NULL.

This treatment of zero-length character data is ANSI behavior. If you require non-ANSI behavior, see the Non_Ansi_Null_Varchar option in the Adaptive Server IQ Reference Manual.

The DATE Option

	Use the DATE conversion option to insert ASCII data that is stored in a fixed
	format into a DATE column. This option converts the ASCII data input to
	binary and specifies the format of the input data. (The DATE format is used
	internally to interpret the input; it does not affect the storage or output format
	of the data.) See the ASCII conversion format for more information.
Example	In this Windows NT example, data for the l_shipdate column is converted from
	the specified format into binary. The 1–byte FILLER skips over carriage returns
	in the input file.

LOAD TABLE lineitem(

l_orderkey NULLS(ZEROS) ASCII(4), l_partkey ASCII(3),

l_shipdate DATE(’MM/DD/YY’), l_suppkey ASCII(5),

FILLER(1))

FROM ’C:\\MILL1\\shipinfo.t’

PREVIEW ON

Specifying the DATE Format

	Specify the format of the input data using y or Y for years, m or M for months,
	d or D for days, and j or J for Julian days. The length of the format string is the
	width of the input column. Table 5-7 describes the formatting options.
	Table 5-7: Formatting dates
Option		Meaning
yyyy or YYYY		Represents number of year. Default is 1900.
yy or YY

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