Inserting a value into DB date column doesn't work

Problem

If I want to insert a value to a DB date column during a FireStart workflow it doesn't work, in fact, I receive a database error.

Solution

This could be due to a bug in the MS SQL ODBC and OleDB drives. Unfortunately, we can't do anything about this issue, because the drives cause the problems. Please check the bullets displayed below in order to find out if this is what is happening: 

• The DB column is of type date
• The column is used for mapping in FireStart

The ODBC and OleDB drives provide System.String as type. So when inserting a value the type returned by the drives is used (System.String), which means it is not converted to System.DateTime and therefore the String will be inserted. As a result, there is a type mismatch between the type of the value System.String (value) and the column type which is date. 

Workaround

Declare the column as datetime and the ODBC and OleDB drives will hand the correct type (System.DateTime) over.