graff,
You are assuming that the code will not know how to handle that string and will fail. I am assuming it will use one of YY/MM/DD, YY/DD/MM, MM/YY/DD, MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, DD/YY/MM and work. What I am asking for is that the documentation indicate which one, if any, is used. Additionally, in the cases of ambiguity, I want to be able to control which one is used.

With regards to the data. The values are in a field designated as a date type so in fact I can be sure they are supposed to be dates. The automation need not be able to parse every string (throwing errors is fine) but when it does parse it - it should NEVER get it wrong.