Storing the date as an INTEGER value
In some cases, I have seen date modeling implemented as an integer in business applications. It is mostly the result of formal date management in Oracle RDBMS, where time elements do not need to be considered. It is assumed that the storage requirements can be lowered by using appropriate numeric value sizing. Moreover, if function-based indexes are applied to numeric date modeling, then the performance of the element extraction can be ensured.
On the other hand, there can be significant issues related to the processing. Firstly, the representation strongly depends on the positional element models. Typically, when represented by the DATE
value, separators (mappers) are present, dividing individual elements. However, let’s look at a simple numerical value passing the format DDMMYYYY
. The previously stated separator management principle cannot be used, resulting in a possible loss of reliability. Let’s consider the example of 1st...