Northgate Reality
FAQs, latest to oldest...
How can I use different default date formats or time zones
Reality uses the underlying hardware and Operating System to provide the real-time clock and calendar.
Date Format:
The default display from English and DataBasic output is the international form of dd/mm/yyyy. In order to change this to the standard MultiValue form of mm/dd/yyyy you can use the TCL command DATE-FORMAT, which will set the required format for the duration of the current login session.
For details refer to DATE-FORMAT in the On-Line Documentation Index. To change it permanently for a database use the "DateFormat=" parameter in the config file. For details refer to "config file, parameters" in the Index.
Timezones:
Unix systems are designed so that their hardware clock is set to GMT, also known as UCT, and a local time zone is then set so users see their expected local time. Users can then modify the time they see by setting the TZ (TimeZone) environment variable.
For example:
Setting TZ=EST and running the ‘date’ command will show the time for American Eastern Standard Time. Reality correctly handles the TZ environment variable so running a "TZ=EST reality dbase_name" command will run a Reality user in any time zone you wish - Eastern Standard Time in this case.
To set up multiple databases on a System, each with their own time zone, this would currently have to be done using a "group of users" for each required time zone. For example, their login process could run the UNIX .profile with TZ=??? within it.
Notes:
- Use “man timezone” at the Unix shell prompt for more information on Unix time zones.
- This method of setting the time zone is currently only available on UNIX platforms.
- Although later releases of Windows use the TZ environment variable this is currently not deployed within Reality.
