February 30th, 1712 and databases...

[Colin McGregor]

A question I tossed out to the database people just after the last
GTALug meeting was how their database software would handle February
30th. Yes, I am serious, but yes this is also the corner case of
corner cases. During the transition between the Julian calendar and
the Gregorian calendar, Sweden (and Sweden only) in 1712 had a
February 30th as noted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_30
. This could be an issue for databases being used for genealogy of
people from Sweden (not me...) or other historic material from Sweden
(ie: were there any laws passed on February 30th, 1712 ?).

So, bottom line question I guess is are there database programs that
are smart enough to know that February 30th can (in one VERY
exceptionally unusual case) be a valid date?



Colin McGregor

P.S. I first heard about the valid February 30th earlier this year as
I was looking for ways to torture test some calender software that was
then being developed at the firm I was working at then. The software
wasn't to be used in Sweden, so the above didn't apply, but I did find
other historic oddities (related to the Julian --> Gregorian
transition) to cause an incorrect result :-) .
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