Date inputs (UK format) in SQL svr 2000 with OLE DB

[Niall Porter]

Hi all,

I'm building an ASP app on a Windows 2000/IIS machine which interfaces
with our SQL Server 2000 database via OLE DB.

Since we're based in the UK I want the users to be able to type in
dates in UK date format to input into the database. In Enterprise
Manager on the SQL Server I can manually enter a record into a table
and just type in a UK date (MM/DD/YYYY e.g. 25/12/2004) and it accepts
it happily.

However, if I enter the exact same record on the form on the web page,
again using the UK date format, I get this back from the IIS box:
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E07)
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted
in an out- of-range datetime value.
/ictest/eventadm.asp, line 78

I'm assuming that despite SQL Server accepting the date in UK format,
OLE DB will not. Can the OLE provider be configured to allow such
date formats, either (I imagine) in the registry or by altering the
connection string?

TIA,
Niall

[Allan Mitchell]

Make sure the SQL Server user is a UK English User otherwise SQL Server will
do this

(presume user language is set to English (American))

This guy is American so he is giving me a date of 25/12/2004. Americans use
MMDDYYYY so what he means is

the 12th day of the 25th month

this as we can guess is way out of range.
Here is another example

SET LANGUAGE us_english
GO

select cast('25/12/2004' as datetime)

Changed language setting to us_english.
Server: Msg 242, Level 16, State 3, Line 2
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an
out-of-range datetime value.

SET LANGUAGE British
GO

select cast('25/12/2004' as datetime)

2004-12-25 00:00:00.000

--
--

Allan Mitchell MCSE,MCDBA, (Microsoft SQL Server MVP)
www.SQLDTS.com - The site for all your DTS needs.
www.konesans.com - Consultancy from the people who know
"Niall Porter" <ni*********@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2d**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi all,

I'm building an ASP app on a Windows 2000/IIS machine which interfaces
with our SQL Server 2000 database via OLE DB.

Since we're based in the UK I want the users to be able to type in
dates in UK date format to input into the database. In Enterprise
Manager on the SQL Server I can manually enter a record into a table
and just type in a UK date (MM/DD/YYYY e.g. 25/12/2004) and it accepts
it happily.

However, if I enter the exact same record on the form on the web page,
again using the UK date format, I get this back from the IIS box:
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E07)
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted
in an out- of-range datetime value.
/ictest/eventadm.asp, line 78

I'm assuming that despite SQL Server accepting the date in UK format,
OLE DB will not. Can the OLE provider be configured to allow such
date formats, either (I imagine) in the registry or by altering the
connection string?

TIA,
Niall

[Simon Hayes]

"Niall Porter" <ni*********@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2d**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi all,

I'm building an ASP app on a Windows 2000/IIS machine which interfaces
with our SQL Server 2000 database via OLE DB.

Since we're based in the UK I want the users to be able to type in
dates in UK date format to input into the database. In Enterprise
Manager on the SQL Server I can manually enter a record into a table
and just type in a UK date (MM/DD/YYYY e.g. 25/12/2004) and it accepts
it happily.

However, if I enter the exact same record on the form on the web page,
again using the UK date format, I get this back from the IIS box:
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E07)
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted
in an out- of-range datetime value.
/ictest/eventadm.asp, line 78

I'm assuming that despite SQL Server accepting the date in UK format,
OLE DB will not. Can the OLE provider be configured to allow such
date formats, either (I imagine) in the registry or by altering the
connection string?

TIA,
Niall

The best way to handle this would probably be to use a date format which
works regardless of any client and server settings - there are two:

'20040728' -- no time needed
'2004-07-28T20:20:00' -- ISO8601, includes time

Although I don't know much about ADO, I believe that if ADO is aware that
the target is a datetime parameter or column, it will automatically handle
the conversion for you. That might be one option for you - pass the value to
a stored procedure, and when you use the Command.CreateParameter method, ADO
will be aware that the parameter is datetime. But I admit that I haven't
tried it myself, so I may be wrong about this.

Simon

[Erland Sommarskog]

Niall Porter (ni*********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

Since we're based in the UK I want the users to be able to type in
dates in UK date format to input into the database. In Enterprise
Manager on the SQL Server I can manually enter a record into a table
and just type in a UK date (MM/DD/YYYY e.g. 25/12/2004) and it accepts
it happily.

However, if I enter the exact same record on the form on the web page,
again using the UK date format, I get this back from the IIS box:
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E07)
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted
in an out- of-range datetime value.
/ictest/eventadm.asp, line 78

I'm assuming that despite SQL Server accepting the date in UK format,
OLE DB will not. Can the OLE provider be configured to allow such
date formats, either (I imagine) in the registry or by altering the
connection string?

So how does your code look like? Since you get the error from OLE DB,
I assume that you are passing the value as a parameter to a prepared
statement, and that you declare the parameter to be of type
adDBTimeStamp. In such case you must use ISO format, 2004-12-25.

If you want to support regional settings, you should use some ASP
routine to convert the date value. CDate() might be your guy, but
we're straying beyond the realms of this newsgroup. You may want to
try an ASP forum.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[Niall Porter]

Thanks for all the help from everyone so far, I'm not quite out of the
woods yet tho!

"Allan Mitchell" <al***@no-spam.sqldts.com> wrote in message news:<41**********************@news.zen.co.uk>...

Make sure the SQL Server user is a UK English User otherwise SQL Server will
do this

(presume user language is set to English (American))
The database user (a pure SQL Server user) was set to English. I
found another language called "British English", I've changed that
user to British English and now I can input dates in a UK format
(DD/MM/YYYY) which is great, thanks for that. I appreciate the 'best'
way to do it is to use an ISO format but my users wouldn't cope with
such technicalities as this...

However, dates *returned* are still in US format (MM/DD/YYYY)! Is
there some other esoteric setting I have to tweak somewhere?
This guy is American so he is giving me a date of 25/12/2004. Americans use
MMDDYYYY so what he means is

the 12th day of the 25th month

this as we can guess is way out of range.
Here is another example

SET LANGUAGE us_english
GO
Won't that set it for the all databases on the whole server? We have
a number of applications that use the SQL server for their databases,
some of which may well have been developed in the states. If I change
the setting for the whole server, any other applications that don't
use the ISO or other non-regional date formatting will break surely?
select cast('25/12/2004' as datetime)
Tried this also, didn't make any difference.
Changed language setting to us_english.
Server: Msg 242, Level 16, State 3, Line 2
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an
out-of-range datetime value.

SET LANGUAGE British
GO

select cast('25/12/2004' as datetime)

2004-12-25 00:00:00.000

--
--

Allan Mitchell MCSE,MCDBA, (Microsoft SQL Server MVP)
www.SQLDTS.com - The site for all your DTS needs.
www.konesans.com - Consultancy from the people who know

[Erland Sommarskog]

Niall Porter (ni*********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

However, dates *returned* are still in US format (MM/DD/YYYY)! Is
there some other esoteric setting I have to tweak somewhere?

I'm still not sure why you post this in an SQL Server forum, I would
expect this to be an ASP problem. Then again, since you have not posted
any code, I have no idea of what you are doing.

SET LANGUAGE us_english
GO

Won't that set it for the all databases on the whole server? We have
a number of applications that use the SQL server for their databases,
some of which may well have been developed in the states. If I change
the setting for the whole server, any other applications that don't
use the ISO or other non-regional date formatting will break surely?

SET LANGAUGE changes the language for the current session. However, this
option controls how date literals are interpreted on *SQL Server* and
you got the conversion error on client level.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[Allan Mitchell]

Erland.

If the client connects as a US user on a UK server entering a data of
'25/12/2004' then wouldn't the error returned be this error. My expereince
of mixing regional settings says it would.

--
--

Allan Mitchell MCSE,MCDBA, (Microsoft SQL Server MVP)
www.SQLDTS.com - The site for all your DTS needs.
www.konesans.com - Consultancy from the people who know
"Erland Sommarskog" <es****@sommarskog.se> wrote in message
news:Xn**********************@127.0.0.1...

Niall Porter (ni*********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

However, dates *returned* are still in US format (MM/DD/YYYY)! Is
there some other esoteric setting I have to tweak somewhere?

I'm still not sure why you post this in an SQL Server forum, I would
expect this to be an ASP problem. Then again, since you have not posted
any code, I have no idea of what you are doing.

SET LANGUAGE us_english
GO

Won't that set it for the all databases on the whole server? We have
a number of applications that use the SQL server for their databases,
some of which may well have been developed in the states. If I change
the setting for the whole server, any other applications that don't
use the ISO or other non-regional date formatting will break surely?

SET LANGAUGE changes the language for the current session. However, this
option controls how date literals are interpreted on *SQL Server* and
you got the conversion error on client level.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[Erland Sommarskog]

Allan Mitchell (al***@no-spam.sqldts.com) writes:

If the client connects as a US user on a UK server entering a data of
'25/12/2004' then wouldn't the error returned be this error. My
expereince of mixing regional settings says it would.

Depends. The error Neill got was:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E07)
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted
in an out-of-range datetime value.

The only way to get that error from Query Analyzer is to connect a linked
server with a date-format conflict along the line.

The problem here is that things can to wrong on several levels. In Neill's
case it got wrong already on client level. I suspect because he was
using adDBTimeStamp to which he must feed an ISO format.

It is also confusing since the regional settings on the client neither the
server on what happens in SQL Server which uses its own language
definitions. You can set language when you connect, but then you have to
pass that in the connection string - and it has to be a language as SQL
Server knows it.

The main problem in Neill's case is that he has not posted any code, so
we are left to guessing.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp