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Dates Not Displaying on Report

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    #1

    Dates Not Displaying on Report

    Hi-

    I've had some weird issues during my programming with Alpha... BUT this is the strangest. I hope you can help!

    I inherited an application from another programmer who is no longer available to support the application. I'm the new programmer and support person.

    I was notified by the customer, in June, that one of the reports that they use regularly ("New Hires Report"), "randomly" won't display the employee's Birth Date.

    The rest of the record displays perfectly... and the rest of the report works great. The back-end database is SQL Server. AND... when I execute the table on the server's SQL Server, all of the Birth Dates display perfectly. AND... when I run the report in Working Preview or Live Preview on my development system, all dates display perfectly.

    I've been trying to diagnose this for a couple of weeks... Why do most of the dates display fine, but "some" do not?

    Well, it took some detective work, but I have discovered that all Birth Dates prior to 1970 don't display... Any Birth Dates after that date display properly (that's why it's infrequent, most of the people hired by this retail store chain happen to be younger than 45).

    Like I said... It's very weird. All dates display on my system... and all dates are correct on the Server's SQL Server... BUT the report won't display any Birth Dates prior to 1970.

    Here's some additional information:
    1. There's nothing in the "table" that filters the date in any way;
    2. There's nothing in the report's field definition that filters the date (and, remember, the record displays perfectly... it's just that the date is blank)
    3. The report, in "preview" mode on my system displays all Birth Dates correctly
    4. I've tried converting the date to a string (with "Str")... the same dates are blank
    5. I've tried using various date formats (with "dtoc" and calculated fields)... no matter what I do, the same Birth Dates are blank.


    I have no idea why 1970 is special... but I'm more frustrated now that I've figured out why some dates aren't displaying.

    If you have any ideas, you will rise to "hero" status... I've spent way too much time on this puzzle.

    I hope you can help.

    Phil
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

    Phil, good sleuthing.

    You don't say what version/build of Alpha you're using or SQL Server version or Report format type.

    The 1970 clue is that some Javascript date functions are calculated from Jan 1 1970. E.g. now() and UTC() return the number of milliseconds since midnight Jan 1 1970.

    However, I just ran a freeform report against a SQL 2016 and 2012 table using the latest release of Alpha and all is fine.

    Can you post your report .a5rpt file? And a sample table with a few records?

    ReportFF_DOB.PNG

    If you're running a select statement for the report you could try adding a new calculated column... e.g.

    Code:
    SELECT ID, Lastname, DOB, CONVERT(varchar(10), DOB, 103) as strDOB FROM Employees
    Last edited by Davidk; 07-11-2016, 02:09 AM.

    Comment

      #3
      Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

      Hi David-

      THANK YOU so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.

      More important, you're a genius! When I added a new field: "CONVERT(varchar(10), Birth_Date, 1) as strBirthDate", all of the dates correctly appeared on the report, exactly the way they're supposed to look.

      I can't thank you enough. I'm still not completely sure why it happened (tomorrow, I'll look at the field definition on the underlying SQL table to see if the person who created the table did anything odd), but, in the meantime, I'm delighted that I can tell my customer that it's working now.

      You really helped me on this and I appreciate it.

      Thanks again,
      Phil

      Comment

        #4
        Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

        Hi David-

        Just wanted to update you: The SQL Server Edition is "SQL Server Express 2012 - 64-bit" (see image below). I checked the date specification in the table to see if the previous designer did anything unusual in the field specifications, but there wasn't anything odd (Field Name: Birth_Date; specified as a "Date" field).

        SQLServer1.jpg

        Because ALL of the Birth Dates DID display on the Server when I executed the original "SELECT" statement (but the pre-1970 dates DID NOT display on the report itself), I am assuming that there is something in Alpha's "report field specifications" that caused this anomaly.

        Thanks to your help... and the SQL Server conversion to a "string" (instead of a Date Field), it's working fine now, so I'm going to leave it alone. If, at some point, the customer needs to manipulate that date field (unlikely) and I have a problem, then I'll have to revisit the issue again.

        You're terrific... Thanks for all your help.

        Phil

        Comment

          #5
          Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

          Not sure which version of Alpha you're using, but using the current release a free-form report isn't doing anything to dates. My report hasn't any issues with pre-1970 dates. Are you doing something with the date in the report?

          Comment

            #6
            Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

            I'm using the latest build (from last week) of Alpha Anywhere. The previous designer did NOT use a "free-form" report. It's a columnar report (I don't like them... very hard to work with).

            Comment

              #7
              Re: Dates Not Displaying on Report

              Columnar report... you mean a Layout Table Report? If so... have to agree... really, really tough to work with. And... there's a new option for Free-form reports called HTML-Paged which let's you do away with having to bother with PDF.

              Comment

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