Specifying the data type

To override the default behavior and to explicitly specify the data type, a data type indicator must precede the bind value. The syntax for this is:

:bind([T|N|D],value)

The following table lists the data type indicators and the relationship between each data type indicator and the ODBC data types.

Data Type Indicator

ODBC data type

T or TEXT

SQL_CHAR

N or NUM or NUMBER

SQL_NUMERIC

D or DATE

SQL_DATETIME

For information about item formats and interpretation, see Item Type Properties.

As an example of specifying a data type, to bind a date value to a statement, you must specify that the value be of data type DATETIME. The SQL statement would be entered as:

            DBLOOKUP("select Age from Person where DateOfBirth=:bind([DATE]," + 
                    DateItem:Row + ")", 
                    "DB.mdq", 
                    "MyDB")

If the [DATE] data type indicator is not specified, the trace file from the adapter displays the following error message:

Message: [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access 97 Driver] 
   Data type mismatch in criteria expression.