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How DateTime columns are handled in BlueSky Integration Studio

You may have noticed that DateTime columns are read, transformed, and written as the System.String Data type. This is because at the core, BlueSky Integration Studio builds SQL string statements and submits them to the output database. For instance, if you have a simple job where you are extracting data from a database and inserting into another database the SQL statement generated may look something like this:

INSERT INTO SALESADMIN.SALES_FACTS VALUES(10, '01/01/2004', 453.34, 'John Smith')

Or, if a DateTime column is empty (''), then the SQL statement would be generated this way:

INSERT INTO SALESADMIN.SALES_FACTS VALUES(10, NULL, 453.34, 'John Smith')

You can quickly change the format of dates by using the DateTimeFormat property on many input data objects. This allows you to have BlueSky Integration Studio format the dates for you on-the-fly as the information is being read from the data source, which saves you from coding it yourself.

NOTE: This was a design change from version 1.x to version 2.x in BlueSky Integration Studio. Originally in version 1.x, DateTime columns were handled as the System.DateTime datatype, however this had a negative impact on many users because it limited them in their ability to re-format dates easily without writing a lot of extra code, and it also slowed the job performance down since the job had to convert the DateTime columns into strings in the SQL generation stage.

See also: Handling Dates In MS Access

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