Export > Text export > ISO format for Date & Time

Date and DateTime format in export/import

Due to the various date formattings used around the world or even within the same country or organisation but with various software Date and DateTime involving data exchange has been a common headache or at least challenge.

Traditional Date and DateTime formatting

Date and DateTime may have various formats depending on regional standards being a risk of misinterpretation when transferring data containing dates, especially the risk of swapping days and months in the DD/MM/YYYY vs. the MM/DD/YYYY format.

Traditionally date import has been depending on carefully selecting the right format, but without specific information about the data source, how would you interpret a date like "09/07/11"

A common error is importing date values as in e.g. the DD/MM/YYYY source format where the proper source interpretation should have been as the of the MM/DD/YYYY format.
Importing with this erroneous setting dates as e.g. "04/12/2010" imports as December 04, 2010 whereas occasional records in the same data source with e.g. dates like "04/14/2010" evaluates as April 14, 2010.

Using ISO Date and DateTime format in exports

To ensure safe date interpretations Date and DateTime exports are recommended always using the internationally acknowledged ISO formats:
'YYYY-MM-DD' and 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:nn:ss'
or
'YYYY-MM-DD hh:nn:ss.sss' if including fractions of seconds down to nano seconds.

Meeting these text formatted Date/DateTimes most modern databases will import correctly irrespective of the default Date/DateTime formats of the database system and of the current Windows settings.

The default setting is FALSE.
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