>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?

Datetime. Other date formats... not so good, specially datetime2 which comes down as, IIRC, a memo.

The use of string literals is required in the SQL commands only, because there are no special date constants, so SQL takes these and converts them while parsing the statement.

(only this, dunno about the rest - the tricky part is what is traveling over the wire, is that encrypted or not?)