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What does the created date 111900 mean in a document or record?
The date "111900" often stands for November 19, 2000, formatted as MMDDYY, which is a common shorthand representation in databases and file systems.
This format can be crucial for sorting and organizing data accurately.
Some software applications, including some versions of SQL Server and Excel, utilize January 1, 1900, as their epoch date.
This means that any null or unassigned date often reverts to this base date, causing confusion when processing historical data.
The representation of dates in computing often follows a specific formatting pattern.
For instance, in Microsoft Excel, January 1, 1900, is treated as day 1, so dates are calculated as the number of days since that date, impacting how date functions work within spreadsheets.
Unix and POSIX systems adopt a different epoch, starting from January 1, 1970.
This epoch is essential for computing time in seconds since that date and is widely used in programming and databases to timestamp events accurately.
In many programming languages, a string interpreted as an empty date will default to the epoch date (like January 1, 1900 for SQL Server).
This behavior can lead to erroneous data interpretations if developers are not aware of these defaults.
The use of a "zero" date like January 1, 1900, can also cause complications in databases.
For example, software migrations or integrations may inadvertently treat this date as valid, leading to incorrect assumptions about data integrity.
The date created attribute in file systems signifies when the document was first saved.
This differs from the last modified date, which indicates the last changes made to the document, important for tracking document revisions.
Relativity software often inserts default dates like "111900" when a date field is left blank.
This is a practice to prevent null entries that can disrupt financial and legal data processing.
The problem of date formatting can be exacerbated in multi-national organizations.
Different regions may use different date formats (MM/DD/YYYY versus DD/MM/YYYY), which can lead to misinterpretation of dates like "11/19/2000".
In terms of database design, employing a dedicated date-time dimension table can help mitigate issues with date interpretation by providing clear, human-readable dates alongside their integer representations.
Special date formatting functions exist in many programming languages to convert between different formats, converting MM/DD/YY to a more standardized form like ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD), which is crucial for interoperability in databases.
The concept of time zones adds another layer of complexity to date handling.
When a date is created or modified, it may be impacted by the local time zone settings of either the application or user, which can lead to discrepancies in timestamp records across different locations.
Unique challenges arise with historical dates before 1900 in Excel, where formulas struggle to represent dates accurately due to this epoch limitation, impacting historical data analysis.
Microsoft’s file management in Windows keeps both creation and last modified dates for files, allowing users to track the lifecycle of documents which is essential in collaborative environments.
SQL Server uses a specialized internal representation of dates that combines a signed integer for the count of days since its epoch with the count of milliseconds since the start of the day, thus providing high-resolution tracking of date-time.
Date manipulation in programming often involves understanding leap years.
This is crucial for calculating durations and differences between dates that traverse century marks when "normal" rules for leap years change.
Unix time does not account for leap seconds, meaning that the elapsed time calculation since the epoch may differ slightly from actual wall clock time due to real-world adjustments.
Various applications incorporate default dates as a placeholder to maintain consistent data integrity across systems.
Failing to account for these can lead to misleading data interpretations, especially in legal or financial documents.
Understanding date storage and retrieval mechanisms is fundamental in engineering fields, especially in database management, where accurate time stamps can determine the validity and reliability of data processing.
Modern file systems also include metadata with documents that can indicate not just the date of creation or modification but also access history, user info, and other attributes, thus providing a complete picture of file interactions over time.
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