Plz. help with strange date insertions in access???

Question

HELLO all,
i noted a strange thing, when i insert into access table the date it swaps the month and day part for some reason in some records .
why is this happening,
plz. help.
code is as follows
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
                                        cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,-1);
                                        System.out.println(""+cal.getTime());
          //this swaps                         SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy")
//this swaps too
     //SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
                                        String currentdate = dateFormat.format(cal.getTime()); // formats your date
custom date is dd/mm/yyyy in table

Answer 1

Hi vykalra1,
As far as I know, the way dates (and times) are stored in a Micro$oft Access database has nothing to do with the display format. The format is only used for displaying the date that is stored in the Access table.
A "field" with "Date/Time" datatype in an Access table maps to the "java.sql.Timestamp" class. Therefore, in order to insert a value into a "Date/Time" (Access) "field", you need to create a "java.sql.Timestamp" object. According to the javadoc, the "java.sql.Timestamp" constructor takes a parameter of type "long" (i.e. java primitive type) -- which represents the number of milliseconds since midnight, 1st January, 1970.
Therefore, you don't really need to use "Calendar" or "SimpleDateFormat".
As I understand it, you are trying to insert yesterday's date into your table. Below is an example using a sample table that has two fields -- 'name' and 'updated' -- which (hopefully) will help you. Note how I determine yesterday's date -- using millisecond calculations only.
The below code was compiled and tested on Windows XP with J2SE SDK 1.4.1_02 and Micro$oft Access 2002.
import java.sql.*;
public class JdbcOdbc {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Connection dbConn = null;
    PreparedStatement stmt = null;
    String sql = "INSERT INTO Table1 (name, updated) VALUES (?, ?)";
    try {
      Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
      dbConn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:db1");
      stmt = dbConn.prepareStatement(sql);
      stmt.setString(1,"vykalra1");
      long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
      long millisecondsInOneDay = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24;
      long yesterday = now - millisecondsInOneDay;
      stmt.setTimestamp(2, new Timestamp(yesterday));
      stmt.executeUpdate();
    catch (SQLException sqlEx) {
      System.err.println("Database operation failed.");
      sqlEx.printStackTrace();
    catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfEx) {
      System.err.println("JDBC driver class not found");
      cnfEx.printStackTrace();
    finally {
      if (stmt != null) {
        try {
          stmt.close();
        catch (SQLException sqlEx) {
          System.err.println("ERROR: Failed to close statement");
          sqlEx.printStackTrace();
      if (dbConn != null) {
        try {
          dbConn.close();
        catch (SQLException sqlEx) {
          System.err.println("ERROR: Failed to close DB connection");
          sqlEx.printStackTrace();
}Good Luck,
Avi.