Archive for the ‘Date’ tag
Extended Stored Procedure for Date Conversion no comments
Summary
xp_umalqura(Beta) is an Extended Stored procedure designed to integrate the UmALQura Hijri Conversion algorithm with Microsoft SQL Server 2000. By calling the xp_umalqura extended stored procedure (ESP) from SQL Server 2000, you can convert any Hijri date to its equivalent Gregorian datetime value and vice versa using the UmAlQura Algorithm.
Introduction
The start of a Hijri month is marked by the sight of the lunar crescent by a human observer. The sight of the crescent is regulated by many factors, including the location of sighting. Therefore it is very difficult to predict in advance the beginnings and endings of the Hijri months. Moreover, the Hijri year is shorter than the solar (Gregorian) year with around 11 days. Therefore the Islamic occasions do not always start in the same seasons on every solar year. Hence, it is a big challenge to attempt to automate a conversion between Hijri and Gregorian Dates, since the calculated dates might be off by one or two days. The Kuwaiti algorithm was developed using the longest timeline of information on the Hijri calendar as is used in Kuwait and is used in many of Microsoft’s products including SQL Server 2000. The Kuwaiti algorithm is “simply the most accurate algorithm that Microsoft was able to derive using a large number of known Hijri dates.”