Re: BUG #3563: DATESTYLE feature suggestion

Randolf Richardson wrote:
> After convincing clients and colleagues to switch from Oracle (and others)
> to PostgreSQL, an issue that comes up is the need to customize DATESTYLE.
> Because this isn't possible, the developers who were against the move to
> PostgreSQL make it political and recommended work-around solutions such as
> using to_char() or implementing a view for each table that contain
> TIMESTAMP[TZ]s is very difficult to argue with management because a lot of
> time is required to implement these items.
>
> In a future version, to solve this problem, an additional DATESTYLE option
> that uses the same rules as the to_char() function for date formatting would
> solve this problem.  Here's an example:
>
> SET DATESTYLE = 'Custom YYYY-Mon-DD';
>
> This feature would not only resolve this particular political strife, but
> would also solve many other problems, including simplifying coding for raw
> SQL output serving as reports (e.g., users still get confused about dates
> like "2007-06-03," wondering if they refer to June 3rd, or March 6th).
>
> I'm hoping that this suggestion will be an easy one to implement.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> P.S.:  I searched around for a "feature suggestions" page but couldn't find
> it (if one exists, it should be linked to from the "Report a Bug" page).

Yea, it isn't too hard to do, especially for output;  input might be
harder.  This is the first request we have ever gotten for this so it is
doubtful we would add this feature unless there is more demand.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +