The format of date and time fields

The format of a date field can have various characteristics, including:

Order of the day, month, and year

Delimiters between day, month, and year

Representation of fully-written-out dates

Type of calendar (Gregorian or Julian)

Abbreviated and full weekday names

Abbreviated and full month names

The format of a time field can have various characteristics, including:

The hour format (for example, 12-hour or 24-hour format)

The representation of minutes and seconds

The locale-specific indicator for AM/PM

If you use the multi-locale feature, you should not use date formats containing 3-letter months (MMM), %b (abbreviated month name), or %B (full month name). Instead, you should use a delimited or fixed format with a numeric value for the month. For more details about date formats, see Date and time formats. For more details about the multi-locale feature, see About the multi-locale feature.

Date and time formats can appear in SQL statements as well as in the data returned by the database (called a resultset). Some database clients support or require different formats between SQL statements (output) and resultsets (input). The Configuration page for Campaign includes a parameter (DateFormat, DateOutputFormatString, DateTimeFormat, and DateTimeOutputFormatString) for each of the different formats.