DATE is a 32 bit long integer (INT4 or 4 byte integer) in our 7.2 sun Box.

Informix ESQL/C on this platform is now returning it as type INT which on the new platform (Linus red Hat) 64 bit system should be a 64 bit field or “long long integer” INT follows the bit size of a machine register in the CPU normally. (32 bits on Ultrasparc)

One of our applications has this defined as a long integer (32 bit) all over the place, not as informix date all the time.
The developer who wrote it (now gone) freely interwove LONG and DATE in the code. (which means I essentially will be chopping 64 bit values in half………as I move “date” into long.

I am assuming that the data loads into the data base tables will be loading all these date type fields, (date, datetime, time) etc (defined as date or int4) now into 64 bit integer fields in the tables.

Will code references have to be changed accordlingly?

Yes you will need to change your application from LONG to DATE, or keep the application running on a 32-bit Linux box with a remote connection.

Also you mentioned that ESQL/C was no returning as type INT. ESQL should never return as type INT, it should be more specific aka int8 or int4.

Hope this helps.