hello Magnus and Svein,

thanks for your replies.

Yes Svein, you are perfectly right that it is better to use AsDate
properties and that is what I always do, but in this case the error popped
out during the processing of a SQL script:

INSERT INTO TABLE(NUMFIELD, DATEFIELD,...._
VALUES(1, '05.25.2005',.... <--- KA-BOOM :-)

It is a feature of the application that exports a table as a SQL script and
another application then imports that script. So I think that it is better
to temporary change the separators at least in the export/import functions
instead than for the whole application, so the script will be built with
separators that FB knows (and the user will be happy with his separators
when viewing data) and then restore the original separators just before
exiting from the export/import functions (of course into a try finally
block).

Regards
Salvatore