HGETZ: Storing the Current Coordinated Universal Time in a Date-Time Field

How to:

Store the Current Universal Date and Time in a Date-Time Field

HGETZ provides the current Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT time, often called Zulu time). UTC is the primary civil time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time.

The value is returned in the desired date-time format. If millisecond or microsecond values are not available in your operating environment, the function retrieves the value zero for these components.

Syntax: How to Store the Current Universal Date and Time in a Date-Time Field

HGETZ(length, output)

where:

length

Integer

Is the length of the returned date-time value. Valid values are:

8 indicates a time value that includes milliseconds.
10 indicates a time value that includes microseconds.
12 indicates a time value that includes nanoseconds.

output

Date-time

Is the returned date-time value.

Example: Storing the Current Universal Date and Time as a Timestamp

This example,

HGETZ(8, 'HYYMDS')

creates a timestamp representing the current date and time.

Example: Calculating the Time Zone

The time zone can be calculated as a positive or negative hourly offset from GMT. Locations to the west of the prime meridian have a negative offset. The following request uses the HGETC function to retrieve the local time, and the HGETZ function to retrieve the GMT time. The HDIFF function calculates the number of boundaries between them in minutes. The zone is found by dividing the minutes by 60:

DEFINE FILE EMPLOYEE
LOCALTIME/HYYMDS = HGETC(8, LOCALTIME);
UTCTIME/HYYMDS = HGETZ(8, UTCTIME);
MINUTES/D4= HDIFF(LOCALTIME, UTCTIME, 'MINUTES', 'D4');
ZONE/P3 = MINUTES/60;
END
TABLE FILE EMPLOYEE
PRINT EMP_ID NOPRINT OVER
LOCALTIME  OVER
UTCTIME OVER
MINUTES OVER
ZONE
IF RECORDLIMIT IS 1
END

The output is:

  LOCALTIME  2015/05/12 12:47:04
  UTCTIME    2015/05/12 16:47:04
  MINUTES                   -240
  ZONE                        -4

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