topic Re: Main frame dates conversion in SAS Programming

Main frame dates conversion

kajal_30 — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:32:29 GMT

Hi Team,

I have mainframe dates as 2458058,2458150,2458239. Is there a way I can convert these mainframe dates to readable dates as date9.?

Thanks

Re: Main frame dates conversion

ballardw — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:38:36 GMT

Might not hurt to mention which mainframe ...

Re: Main frame dates conversion

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:49:28 GMT

And to which dates should these numbers (or strings) translate? Please give examples, or supply a formula.

Re: Main frame dates conversion

kajal_30 — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:39:46 GMT

its in SAS mainframe

Re: Main frame dates conversion

kajal_30 — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:41:11 GMT

there is no formula or final results I can see they are only being used in the filter condition.I want to know what dates these numbers represents

Re: Main frame dates conversion

ballardw — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 19:43:15 GMT

@kajal_30 wrote:

its in SAS mainframe

SAS is software and runs on many hardware platforms and operating systems. Mainframe refers to the hardware as various hardware systems will treat their native dates differently. Sometimes the hardware could even run different operating systems, some flavor of UNIX vs Z/OS for example.

If the value in a SAS data set were numeric 2458058 then that would correspond to a SAS date value of 09DEC8689. So I suspect that you have a need to read a value from the operating system and convert to an actual SAS date value.

So which hardware and which operating system and what dates would those values reflect?

Re: Main frame dates conversion

SASKiwi — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:47:23 GMT

Where are you reading these dates from? There is no such thing as a "standard mainframe date format" so unless you tell us more about where you are reading dates and how they are stored then we can't help.

Re: Main frame dates conversion

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 08:02:00 GMT

You have to find some reference points for these values. Dividing by 365.25 (my suspicion was that these are counts of days from 0001-01-01) or 86400 did not end with values that make sense as dates.

If someone used these values in the context of dates without documenting how they are calculated, said someone needs to be flogged publicly in front of the whole IT department, pour encourager les autres.

Unless the calculation method is commonly used in your company, and every mainframe programmer there knows it like we know that SAS dates start at 1960-01-01.

Re: Main frame dates conversion

ChrisNZ — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 08:59:47 GMT

This could it be a "SQL Server corrected" Julian date.

data T;
  JULDATE = 2458239;
  SASDATE = JULDATE - 2361331 + '01jan1753'd ;
  putlog SASDATE= date9. ;
run;

SASDATE=30APR2018
See here and here. The start would be at noon on the 1st of January 4713 BC. Or something.

I'm off making up my own new date format...

@kajal_30 You'd be much better off having at least one value to validate the formula.