Date-time fields include date, time, and timestamp data items of class date-time, and are allowed for zoned, packed, and character DDS fields that specify the DATFMT keyword. Date data types are not the same as date, time, and timestamp fields that are brought into your program as fixed-length character fields. In ILE COBOL, date data types are converted to USAGE DISPLAY or USAGE PACKED-DECIMAL data items, and date, time, and timestamp fields are converted to alphanumeric data items (as described in Class Alphanumeric).
Date data types are converted to their equivalent ILE COBOL format from COPY DDS when the *CVTTODATE conversion parameter option (CVTOPT) is specified.
For more information about the DATFMT parameters allowed and the equivalent ILE COBOL format that is generated for them from COPY DDS when the CVTOPT(*CVTTODATE) conversion parameter is specified, refer to the IBM Rational Development Studio for i: ILE COBOL Programmer's Guide.