Taking a breather from my exploration of TNS connection issues, I’d like to take a quick romp through the use (and MIS-use) of date formatting. There are no deep mysteries revealed here, and everything is quite well documented. But judging from traffic on OTN forums, it appears this is an area that leaves a lot of confusion. I will try to address those points of confusion directly, and provide examples that will, hopefully, clarify the documentation by connecting some of the dots that people seem to miss.