AA - Entity Property data types - please add "DateOnly"

[#1]

We are in need of a DateOnly data type in the AA Entity Property editor.

Having/using this data type would accomplish:

• Meta-data in the table SECTABLEDEFS would be correctly flagged to indicate that the DB field is DateOnly (do not perform GMT conversations)
• Applications relying on the SLX OleDB provider would behave correctly because SLX OleDB uses the meta-data from SECTABLEDEFS
• We would now have AA model meta-data to use at design-time and/or run-time for configuring DateTimePicket.DisplayTime = False
• When creating an Entity based on an existing table, the AA Entity property would now more correctly reflect the desired data type

Message Edited by ToddHardin on 04-14-2010 04:13 PM

[#2]

Typo in subject - should read "DateOnly".... sorry.

[#3]

AH!.. now I understand ;-)

YES! - We need to have a DateOnly Datatype.  On one of our customer customizations I'll bet we have over 30 fields that are "Date Only".....

and PLEASE when implementing this make sure it always stores 00:00:00 in the time portion (as well as ignores anything other than 00:00:00 on display). 

[#4]

Thanks for supporting my idea RJ.

Say - I think the issues you mentioned in the second part are all ready addressed. Here is my explaination, let me know if you agree and if I missed a scenario.

re: forcing time portion to 00:00:00

RJ - I think the underlying implementation should *not* try to force 00:00:00 for the time portion. In the LAN side, the "DateOnly" concept is that it is up to the application providing the value to set it to 00:00:00 or any other time value desired. The DateOnly designation results in the SLX OleDB Provider simply *not* performaing any GMTtoLocal or LocalToGMT conversion.

If we had the feature on the web side over-write all time values with 00:00:00 then it woudl prevent people from using this feature as needed for certain scenarios.

re: "ignores anything other than 00:00:00 on the display"

Not someting that would be necessarily handled in the Entity level infrastructure. The Entity.Property meta-data could certainly be useful for wizards used in U.I. design, but ultimately suppressing the time portion in a display is the job of the DateTimePicker control (which has this feature now so no change needed). The other place I can think of is the SLX Group layout column definition, which also has this capability now so no change needed other than intelligently defaulting the formatting when a colulmn is first added to a group layout. I'm not sure if that functions that way already or not?

Is there another case you are thinking of that is missed?