set option question

I am going through The Practical SQL Handbook (Bowman, et al,
Addison-Wesley, 1999), which at p. 416 begins to describe the SQL for a
sample database used in this book.

This sample was designed for Sybase SQLAnywhere, so there appear to be some
differences between the book's SQL and Postgres' SQL.

In particular: at p. 416, it contains the following SQL:

set option date_format='Mmm dd yyyy hh:mmaa'

set option date_order = 'MDY'

set option scale = 2


when I enter these commands into Postgres, I get the following error:

parser: parse error at or near "date_format".

Similarly it generates errors for "date_order" and  for "scale".

What are the equivalent Postgres commands to effect this?

Regards,

Duncan C. Kinder
dckinder@mountain.net