The internal representations

The internal representations are efficient for sorting and comparisons and Java operations, but may not be familiar to business users:

• The internal representation of a Date value is eight digits in the format yyyyMMdd, for example, 20181214 represents December 14, 2018.
• The internal representation of Time of Day value is six digits in the format HHmmss, where the hours portion ranges from 00 to 23. For example, 153025 represents 25 seconds after 3:30 P.M.
• For DateTime values, the internal representation is stored in the GMT timezone in the format yyyyMMddTHHmmss.SSS GMT, where GMT and T are literal characters, MM represents a month, dd is a day, yyyy is a year, HH is an hour value between 00 and 23, mm is a minute value between 00 and 59, ss is a second value between 00 and 59, and SSS is milliseconds. For example, 20181016T032300.000 GMT represents 3:23 A.M. on October 16, 2018 in the GMT time zone

Entering date and time constants (developer)

When a developer enters a value corresponding to a Time of Day or DateTime into a rule form, no format conversion occurs, but certain shortcuts are available.

Date values

You can enter a date using either two or four digits for the year. If the year contains two digits, the system uses an algorithm to determine a "reasonable" century based on the current date. During 2016, the system prefers dates between 2007 and 2107.

TimeofDay values

To enter a constant TimeofDay value into a rule form, enter either all six digits or omit the seconds portion.

DateTime values

When entering a DateTime value in a rule form, the second and millisecond values default to zero. If the year is input as two digits, the system uses an algorithm to determine a "reasonable" century based on the current date. During 2006, the system prefers dates between 1997 and 2097. If you omit the time zone, the date and time are converted from the current server time zone to the GMT time zone by adding or subtracting hours.

Date constants

When entering a Date literal constant as an entire expression, be sure to include double quotes, to distinguish:

"20181215"

the date December 15, 2018 from:

20181215

an integer that is converted to 20,181,215.

Entering and presenting values in an application context

Pega Platform supports dozens of formats that your application can choose to present dates and times in ways familiar to application users. The formats that apply in specific cases depend on the selected non-auto-generated control rule or the configuration of the pxDateTime auto-generated control rule (Rule-HTML-Property rule type) associated with the property or the form and the locale.

Many formats are locale-specific, changing automatically based on the value set on each user's workstation, or the locale of a user as recorded in the Operator ID data instance.

For example, the date 20181214 can appear as any of the following:

12/14/18

14/12/18

December 14, 2018

14 décembre 2018

Similarly, many different formats and shortcuts are available for input. These date and time formats are based on version 1.3 of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR).

Time zone and Daylight Savings Time conversions

Pega Platform uses the time zones provided by the JVM on which it runs. The JVM typically uses data provided by the Olson TZ database. Details on this database are available from https://www.iana.org/time-zones.

Testing input and output formats

To see the effect of a specific control rule on input and output formats for a property:

1. Open the Property form.
2. Click Preview.
3. Enter a value in the Input field.
4. Click Show output.

The Locale settings tool is also useful in understanding the effect of locales on date and time formats by temporarily changing your locale. To access the Locale settings tool, click ConfigureUser InterfaceApplication readinessLocalizationLocale settings.

Converting or comparing a DateTime value to a Date value

The first eight characters of a DateTime value match the structure of a Date value that is formatted as yyyyMMdd, for example 20180930 represents September 30, 2018. Accordingly, a simple way to compare a Date value with a DateTime value is to first select a substring of the DateTime value, consisting of the initial eight characters. Both values then have a common string format and length, and a normal string comparison works.

For example, the Property-Set method "converts" a DateTime value to a Date value by selecting the first eight characters.

When the DateTime value is 20181201T011532.006 GMT, the resulting value for the Date property MyDate is 20181201.

However, this approach ignores the time zone information in the DateTime value, because the Date value conveys no time zone.

Use the FormatDateTime function to convert a DateTime value to a Date value as shown below:

@FormatDateTime(.pyExpireDateTime, "yyyyMMdd", "", "")

Converting or comparing a DateTime value to a TimeOfDay value

The substring of a DateTime value from character position 10 to character position 15 contains a time-of-day value, in the format HHmmss expected by a property that has a Type of TimeOfDay.

Similarly to Date conversion, you can "convert" or extract this TimeOfDay value from a DateTime value with a Property-Set assignment.

When the DateTime value is 20181201T011532.006 GMT, the resulting value for the Time property MyTime is 011532.

However, this approach ignores the time zone information in the DateTime value, because the Time value conveys no time zone.

Use the FormatDateTime function to convert a DateTime value to a TimeOfDay value as shown below:

@FormatDateTime(.pyExpireDateTime, "HHmmss", "", "")

Converting Date or TimeOfDay values to DateTime values

See Data type conversions in expressions and property assignments.

Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and IBM Db2 notes

Because vendors have implemented variations from SQL standards, mappings between Pega Platform data types and database column types vary by vendor. For the PegaRULES database, Pega Platform uses the mappings described here.

This information may be helpful when your application uses Connect SQL rules to access an external database that uses the vendor's software.

Oracle

The Oracle data type DATE corresponds to the Pega Platform DateTime property type. To save a Pega Platform Date property into an Oracle database, use VARCHAR2(8), not DATE, as the Oracle data type.

The Oracle TIMESTAMP data type is supported throughout the Pega Platform data layer. For more information, see the Pega Community article DateTime property mapping in Oracle for Pega 7.

IBM Db2

IBM's Db2 DATE data type corresponds to the Pega Platform Date property type. This data type does not contain any time information. Use the Db2 TIMESTAMP data type with the Pega Platform DateTime property to store a date with the time.

The Db2 TIME data type does not correspond to any Pega Platform property type. Use a Db2 VARCHAR(8) to map a Time property to a Db2 column.

When feasible in external Db2 databases, use the Db2 TIMESTAMP data type instead of DATE or TIME. If not feasible, use a Pega Platform property type of Text to hold the value, which can be converted (cast).

Microsoft SQL Server

The Microsoft DATETIME data type corresponds to the DateTime property type.