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Status Not under consideration
Workspace Db2 for z/OS
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 24, 2019

Invalid maximum timestamp value availble in DB2

Currently there is documented maximum timestamp value available in DB2 as '9999-12-31-24.00.00.000000'. However, using this value can lead to various problems which are recognized by DB2 development already as during introduction of temporal tables, the maximum timestamp for temporal objects generated by Db2 is '9999-12-30-00.00.00.000000'

Below quote from PMR with IBM explanation why currently documented maximum timestamp is wrong and in fact should not be used.

"

when you use a getTimestamp or getString call to retrieve data from a TIMESTAMP(p) column, the IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ converts the value to a java.sql.Timestamp. It turns out that java.sql.Timestamp is based on java.util.Date which represents hours as values from 0 to 23. Unlike the DB2 family support of SQL, the value 24 is not part of the lexical representation for Java. Hence, 24.00.00.000000000000 becomes 0.00.00.000000000000 of the next day. For example, the value '2010-11-03-24.00.00.000000000000' would be shown as '2010-11-04-00.00.00.000000000000'. Apart from Java tools such as Data Studio, this issue may lead to problems (or confusion) for Java developers. With the DB2 10 for z/OS support of bitemporal data, this problem is further amplified because a maximum timestamp value is stored in the ROW END of every column in a system-period temporal table. DB2 uses '9999-12-31-24.00.00.000000000000' as that end value, and when these timestamp values are later externalized through Data Studio they are returned as as 10000-01-01 00:00:00.0 which does not make sense to the user because DB2 does not support 5-digit years.

"

SQL council agreed that better value will be in the temporal tables case the '9999-12-30-00.00.00.000000' - also to allow conversion from data type timestamp without timezone, to timestamp with timezone, which would end in error for value like currently documented maximum timestamp.

This should be changed and maximum value should be unified across all objects with some possible migration help otherwise it seems like DB2 development consciously allows to use value which is not fully supported by DB2 and which in result present a problem.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 28, 2019

    Makes sense for Db2 LUW as well! See limits of TIMESTAMP in https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_11.1.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.sql.ref.doc/doc/r0001029.html