Searching - Dates

FieldNametype=date

WebCatalog normally compares all fields in a database as though they were text, even if they look like dates to you. Unless you tell it to compare a field as a date (or as a number), all comparisons are alphabetical.

If your database has a date field (SoldDate, for instance) that you wish to sort in date-order, you would put something like the following in the search criteria:

http://Results.tpl?command=search&geSoldDatedata=2/17/96&SoldDatetype=date

Why is this important? Imagine that WebCatalog is comparing two text fields that happen to contain dates in them:

Compare "Feb 12, 1997" to "Jan 9, 1997" -- when compared alphabetically, WebCatalog looks at the first letter in both fields and sees "F" and "J", respectively. In this case, it would (wrongly) assume that "J" is greater than "F" (which in an alphabetical sense is true), and would sort "Jan 9, 1997" after "Feb 12, 1997". This is probably not what you meant.

When compared as dates, the two numbers would sort correctly.

WebCatalog accepts dates that look like "month/day/year", as in "4/19/97" and "4/19/1997". It uses the global date format preference to decide what order the month/day/year fields are stored (so you can use 1997/05/27 as long as you set the date preference to display dates in that format). All sorting, summaries, and comparisons work correctly when you tell WebCatalog which fields are to be treated as dates.