At 01:43 PM 24/01/2003 +0000, you wrote:

>I'm using PdoxPump, developed by Helen Borie, to transfer data from
>Paradox tables to Firebird version 1. In my Pdox tables I have date
>fields that may or may not be blank. When running the datapump using
>dialect 3, I get the error '30, 12, 1899 00:00:00 is not a good
>timestamp'. The metadata in the Firebird database for the date field
>shows Date NULL. How can I transfer blank dates?

Can you confirm that the message is not " '30.12.1899 00:00:00' is not a
valid timestamp " ? That's the standard Delphi message. If you really are
getting a message exactly like what you reported above, then it indicates
that there is a substitution error in my code...

A date type can't be blank. It can only be a valid date or NULL. So
somehow you need to avoid getting Delphi passing "blank date" as "delphi
date zero", which is the date you see in those numbers. This isn't the
same as Firebird date zero, which is November 17, 1898 - but you don't want
that either.

I thought the code of pdox2ib handled that, by calling Clear on any
datetime field that was blank or zero, to ensure that Firebird gets
NULL. I will have to take a look at that but please re-check that error
message and say exactly what it is.

Helen