Ingres now supports the ANSI date and time data types DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP, and INTERVAL. This enhancement makes it easier for applications to migrate to Ingres from a non-Ingres database.

Previously, Ingres supported one date data type that could store dates, times, intervals, and time stamps. The previous date type is renamed to INGRESDATE.

The configuration parameter date_alias controls whether the keyword DATE used for a column data type refers to INGRESDATE or to ANSIDATE. The date_alias parameter is set during installation and defaults to INGRESDATE.

In Ingres 9.2, the server interprets the date_alias according to the client's config.dat setting. (In contrast, in Ingres 9.1, the client and server each interpret date_alias according to their own config.dat settings. We recommend, therefore, that in Ingres 9.1, both the client and server have the same value for date_alias.)

When migrating from an earlier version of Ingres, the existing date data in the database is not affected. The data is still a valid INGRESDATE data type.

For details, see the SQL Reference Guide.