> I have to save partial dates into a SQLite database ... I have no possibility to store the three values seperate. Taking those as givens, the ISO-8601 representation is a good choice. And for text representations of dates, it is well respected and may be considered "best practice" by some. Since you have provided no facts behind your givens, nor any inkling as to what kinds of processing will be done at what relative frequencies, I see no basis upon which to suggest a better idea or even adjudge one as better or worse.