title: What is better: make "Date" composite attribute or atomic?
body: <p>In a scenerio when I need to use the the entire date (i.e. day, month, year) as a whole, and never need to extract either the day, or month, or the year part of the date, in my database application program, what is the best practice:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Making Date an atomic attribute</li>
  <li>Making Date a composite attribute (composed of day, month, and year)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Edit:- The question can be generalized as:</p>
  
  <p>Is it a good practice to make composite attributes where possible, even when we need to deal with the attribute as a whole only?</p>