The operating system supports several time formats.
The system value QTIME has one format (hhmmss). The time separator value is determined by the QTIMSEP system value.
The time format for presentation should always be stored externally as part of the textual data.
In database files, times can be stored as:
When you store the time as numeric data, your application needs to specify the format in which it is stored and presented.
When you store the time as data type TIME (T), you can specify the format with the DDS keyword TIMFMT on the database file. The time is sorted in this predefined format as character data, including the time separators. To convert time fields from one format to another, write a CL program or high-level language routine to do the conversion.