At 03:34 PM 01-12-02 +1100, you wrote:

>heLen, good reason to use NOW... I thought someone said a while ago that NOW
>is being phased out in favour of SQL99 standard CURRENT_TIMESTAMP but there
>is good currency to use NOW and keep it operational in FB??
>Alan

Good question! I think it was Ivan Prenosil who first picked this one up,
back in the very early days of IB 6. I don't think anyone has yet decided
whether it's a bug that 'NOW' and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP are inconsistent, or
whether it's a Good Thing (TM). IIRC, the CURRENT_* context variables were
put there to supersede the old date literals, being SQL-92 standard, and
were probably *supposed* to deprecate them. However, there is no SQL
standard for the other date literals ('YESTERDAY' and 'TOMORROW') and,
personally, I prefer 'NOW' to CURRENT_TIMESTAMP in the current implementation.

It could be fun to fire up a discussion about it in ib-architect...it's a
while since we saw any Starkey-style vitriol against stuff Borland did to
his database while his back was turned. <g>

cheers,
Helen