System date problem

[Harikrk]

I am using windows xp as my OS. set the system time format as US format. I have developed an application in c# with msssql server as back end. When i change my system date format as UK format (dd/mm/yyy) i am getting the application crashed. The error is comming in the sql query to insert into db. It shows the date is overflow. Can anyone figure out the issue regards hari aspspider.net/rkharikrishnan

[Not Active]

Are you storing the date in a neutral format such as UTC?

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only two letters away from being an asset

[Luc Pattyn]

Yep, date formats are a popular reason for failure. What is 01/02/03 supposed to mean if you are not sure which date format is used ? And which of 28/02/03 and 01/31/03 does not exist (and will cause a Parse exception) ? So best is to use a universal format (such as UTC), independent of what will be input/output to the users. :)

Luc Pattyn

[Harikrk]

thanks for teh reply. can you tell me how i can use UTC format. I am having datetime pickers in my form and also i have to use current date

[Luc Pattyn]

Hi, there are actually two issues: - time zones: if you want to be able to exchange files that contain time info around the world, the app must understand how to handle differences in time zone. That is what UTC offers a good solution for (see some of the DateTime methods). - formats: if you want your app to understand date/time strings in a file, you can not rely on the system's datetime format during parsing to correspond with the one used during writing that info (on same or other machine, by same or other user, with regional settings maybe changed, etc). There are some articles dealing with these issues here on CP, try a search. A found at least one that seems relevant.[^] :)

Luc Pattyn