nano second ticks

[omagarc]

I am connecting to a vendor database that is using some columns in their tables to represent time in nano second ticks.

"Time values are measured in 100-nanosecond units called ticks, and a particular date is the number of ticks since 12:00 midnight, January 1, 0001 A.D."

I need to be able to take a date and time from the user and query a table based on the above.

Has anyone attempted this before?

[Mike Wilson]

Re: nano second ticks

omar,

? now()
= 01/16/2008 12:14:13 58 am

nanoseconds seems about four orders of magnitude more sensitive than the least increment Alpha works on. So, I haven't a clue how you might focus into an increment as narrow as that!

[martinwcole]

Re: nano second ticks

you could create a calculated field that converted the current time to nanoseconds, and subtract it from a constant, as long as it would fit in a 16 digit field

reminds me of how Filemaker used to keep track of time

[Lenny Forziati]

Re: nano second ticks

Alpha Five's timer resolution is in microseconds:

dim x as util::timer
'dim also starts the time
x.Stop()
?x.ElapsedMicroseconds
= 36176092

?x.ElapsedMilliseconds
= 36176

?x.ElapsedSeconds
= 36

[omagarc]

Re: nano second ticks

Thanks for the comments; Apparently this is some sort of .net and is easy for .net programmers...

All I want to do is take a date range and query. Unfortunately, the so called dates are in this 64bit integer number that I just don't have time to figure out. Was looking for some sort of .dll or activex that I could call from Alpha...

[Marcel Kollenaar]

Re: nano second ticks

Hi,

Maybe you could read that field into a blob. It will produce a 64 bit number. With some arithmetic peek and poke you can get two 32 bit values that you can handle.

See also this info link and this and this.

[Marcel Kollenaar]

Re: nano second ticks

Try some of these test constructions. I cannot guarantee success it is a high try and error area and I cannot test them. Sure you will get some type error messages but I hope there will be a construction that will fit. If you can get the field value in a Alpha Five variable then you must take the next step and create a date and time value from it.

 
Dim NanoInt as B
NanoInt.resize(64)
NanoInt = x.tickfield

Or

 
Declarestruct B64BIGINT
Dim NanoInt as {BIGINT}
NanoInt = x.tickfield

Or

 
TYPE BIGINT
           LOW as Integer    '[URL="http://www.cs.umass.edu/~verts/cs32/endian.html"]Big Endian or Little Endian[/URL]
           HIGH as Integer
END TYPE
 
Dim NanoInt as {BIGINT}
NanoInt = x.tickfield

Or

 
TYPE BIGINT
           Member[2] as Integer
END TYPE
 
Dim NanoInt as {BIGINT}
NanoInt = x.tickfield

And at last try:

 
Dim NanoInt as A
NanoInt = x.tickfield

Maybe Xbasic translates this "Any" variable into a blob when you assign it a value from the table.field.

Just some guesses.

[omagarc]

Re: nano second ticks

Thanks Marcel!