Re: Re: Data type confusion

Allan,

> I see now what you are trying to do. It sort of makes sense, but I'm
> still really reluctant to give (semantic or otherwise) meaning to
> "yesterday divided by tomorrow" .....

I don't agree. Consider, for example, this statement:

'30 weeks ago'::INTERVAL / '2 weeks'::INTERVAL = -15
Just as
-30 / 2 = -15

To phrase the equation above: "How many two week periods is thirty
weeks ago? Minus fifteen, or fifteen ago."

This makes perfect sense to me.

> It seems to me that such a function would be more generally useful
> than the division of intervals. What you really want to do is not to
> divide intervals, but to express them in different time units. Or am
> I missing something (again)?

From my pespective? Yes, you are. (For one thing, the CONVERT function
in Postgres converts between unicode character sets, not data-types).

Look, if I'm designing a payroll application for a company with
bi-weekly payroll, I will want a report that shows how many payroll
periods for which an employee has been employed. Thus I will want to:

periods_employed := (current_timestamp - date_hired) / '2
weeks'::INTERVAL

I don't want to go through a bunch of non-ANSI SQL-compliant conversion
functions to do it. Especially not as this is just what the ANSI SQL
data type and operator specs are designed to support.

-Josh

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