How long does data need to be kept for?

[Mark Sreeves]

A user of one of my wonderful apps notified me that an exception was being raised. The error is of course handled so the app keeps running.
The app stores data in a database and is purged and compacted on a daily basis. The maximum age for the data is can be set by the user as a number of days. IN the purge routine this number is converted from days to minutes to retain accuracy.
I use a Long at this point.
Anyway, the user reported that he was getting an Error 6 Overflow during the purge....

Here's the explanation I emailed to my "boss":

The Error 6 in purging the database is because they have a maximum age of nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine days
The maximum should not exceed one million four hundred and ninety one thousand three hundred and eight days.

I realise that I should have allowed for this when coding it but I would have thought that 4080 years I would have been more than adequate, but, if they want to be able to retain data for 2735978 years then I'll have to modify it.

[Bonker Gudd]

You have just made my head overflow

[Mark Sreeves]

[chenko]

2000 Would have been enough