So date type data comes down from SQL server as a string literal? so if pulling down data, the where clause would be something like (for the last 10 years):

...and funding_date > '2008-05-22'

and if funding_date is one of the resulting columns, does it get converted to date format by the ODBC driver or is it also a string literal?

Secondly, I have been working on converting some of this client's sensitive data, like birthdates, to encrypted data. The encrypted data then becomes a string when stored into the VFP tables. This got me thinking about encryption - I read somewhere that SQL server does column level encryption - other than configuring, are values decrypted by the database engine before delivering the result to the client.



>Since SQL doesn't have date literals, it uses strings... and the approach I use is
>
>... and funding_date > '1910-01-01'
>
>Note that you used fox SQL syntax and I'm replying in TSQL syntax. The reason is that I pick the records I want in the where clause of the cursor I'm bringing down, rather than bring more down and filter fox-side. The fewer bytes you push over the wire, the better. Sometimes, for large reporting queries, with lots of repeated values from lookups, I bring the lookups separately and then join the cursors in fox - far faster.