[Glass] DateAndTime users' questionnaire

[Otto Behrens]

> At customer request, we're working on a SmallDateAndTime class for
> GemStone -- a "Special" (immediate) version of DateAndTime that relates
> to DateAndTime similarly to the relationship between SmallInteger and
> LargeInteger. For customers with many persistent DateAndTime instances,
> this should improve both space and time performance.
>

We have many persistent DateAndTime instances. We also have many more
persistent Date instances, which I believe would be even more space
optimising in our case.

Another similar and useful optimisation would be a number representation
that keeps up to 8 decimal places (even less). We would use that for
monetary amounts and values of instruments such as mutual funds. We have
millions of those.


> There are design tradeoffs in resolution, range, printing, etc., and it
> will help us make better decisions if we know how DateAndTime is being
> used now.
>
> (1) Which of the following messages do you use to create DateAndTime
> instances?
>   * DateAndTime now
>

yes, mostly


>   * DateAndTime nowWithScale:
>   * DateAndTime fromString:
>

yes, infrequently


>   * DateAndTime year:day:hour* or year:month:day:hour*
>   * Other protocol
>

DateAndTime class date:time:


> (2) Do you need DateAndTimes with resolution finer than a microsecond?
>

No


> (3) What is your year range of DateAndTime; do you need or use
> DateAndTimes more than 5/10/50 years into the future (or the past)?
>

More than 10 years in the past, less than 50. No future DateAndTimes


> (4) How do you handle DateAndTime printing?
>

asString
date <with different date formatting>; space; time asString


> (5) Have you created a subclass of DateAndTime or DateAndTimeANSI, or
> added your own methods to DateAndTime or DateAndTimeANSI?  If this is
> general functionality that could be useful to include in the base,
> please let us know.
>

We use TimeStamp, but this could just as well be DateAndTime, AFAIK.
Lots of printing methods, all rather specific and not really nice for
inclusion in the base.


> (6) DateAndTime instances would need to be immutable, to be
> interoperable with SmallDateAndTime. If you are using methods that do
> update a DateAndTime, such as offset: or beRounded, does your code
> expect the receiver to be modified?
>

No, it can be immutable.



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