Certain Invalid Date Fields Are Converted to Valid Dates Which Are Returned to the Client Application

• Microsoft COM Transaction Integrator for CICS and IMS, version 4.0 SP2
• Microsoft SNA Server, version 4.0SP2

SYMPTOMS

A variable defined as COBOL type PICTURE 9(7) COMPUTATIONAL-3 (packed decimal) may contain a value to be converted to an automation type of "Date." This article relates to only the case where "Date only" is specified in the COM Transaction Integrator for CICS and IMS (COMTI) Component Builder (CB). That means the field contains a date value, but no time value.

Certain values placed in the COBOL variable are not converted by COMTI runtime as might be expected. For example, if 0x00000000 (nulls, or LOW-VALUES) are assigned to the variable by the COBOL program, the date, 12/31/1999, is returned to a Visual Basic client.

In another example, the value, +50, assigned by the COBOL program is returned to VB client as the date 2/19/2000. In yet another example, assigning 0x0000001f to the COBOL variable yielded the date 1/1/2000.

WORKAROUND

Assign a valid Julian date to the variable in the COBOL program, in the format, YYYYDDDx, where YYYY is the century and year, DDD is the day of the year, and x is not used.

On the mainframe, the x is actually the sign of the decimal number. It is not used by COMTI when converting the date to the automation type.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft SNA Server version 4.0.

Additional query words:

Keywords          : sna4sp2 
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0 SP2,4.0SP2
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbbug 

Last Reviewed: June 10, 1999