[AccessD] Harkins and Brock

Intelligence has nothing to do with it, Gustav.  I just didn't see a
practical use for milliseconds, so I was in Susan's boat.

Actually, we've had to deal with millisecond issues in our apps because
the back ends can be either Access or SQL Server, but we don't use
provider specific code routines, we only bow to the specific providers
when it's necessary ... Like dealing with milliseconds.  What we finally
did was strip the pesky things off our data, where they are pretty
useless anyhow. 

Charlotte Foust 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 3:18 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Harkins and Brock

Hi Charlotte

Come on. Both you and Susan are clever people, this millisecond journey
is just one of those areas where you may not know exactly what is going
on because you either haven't had the need to know or really don't care.
If you know what a double is, you are on your feet.

Susan's problem was that I had a hard time explaining what to use
milliseconds for, and I could only find some generic uninspired
examples. I haven't myself used the milliseconds for anything else than
experiments, but thought it could be useful for some. But, as always,
Susan found a twist to make the topic readable even for the
not-so-enthusiastic reader.

The idea came one day where I wondered why SQL Server presents a time
resolution of 3 ms while Access/VBA/JET only offers 1000 ms, both using
the same underlying data type of double. So what was the resolution of
double really? Much to my surprise, I found out that the resolution is 1
ms (or better) in the full range of data type date/time - from 100-1-1
00:00:00.000 to 9999-12-31 23.59.59.999. 

Then I created the functions needed to generate and read time values
with milliseconds and to create a set of functions handling milliseconds
that mimic the full range of the well-known date/time functions of
Access/VBA. One of the challenges was to get the calculations with
doubles right avoiding bit errors. This was solved by switching to data
type decimal at some critical places.

/gustav


>>> cfoust at infostatsystems.com 12-09-2008 00:42 >>>
OK, all together now ...  "uh... huh????" :)

Is the jagged time thingie the reason why I run out of money before I
run out of time??

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Susan Harkins
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:12 PM
To: AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Harkins and Brock

http://www.devx.com/ 

I just wanted to share this article with you guys -- Gustav and I have
written a number of articles together but this one's different as I had
to ask him repeatedly... "uh... huh????" :)

I think it turned out really well and certainly will be useful to the
developers who actually need it.

Susan H. 


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