>I would like to return only the full date portion of this field.
SQL Server only has a datetime datatype. You will always have a time componenet.
DECLARE @d datetime
SET @d = '20030429'
SELECT @d
You see that the time component is set to 12:00am
>When I perform a search on this field... if I look for 04/11/2003 will I get the appropriate row?
Since there is only a date, SQL Server will default the time component to 12:00am. The only rows that will be matched are those who's value is set to 4/11/2003 12:00am.
I perfer to use the following when searching on dates:
datetimecolumn >= '20030411' and datetimecolumn < '20030412'
-Mike