Stephen,

>I found that Firebird would accept and correctly interpret the date
>element of either field type in either yyyy-MM-dd or MM/dd/yyyy formats.

These are formats that Interbase accepts, but that doesn't mean that your
client program accepts them.

I'm a Windows user, and whenever I want to access a date using the
.AsDateTime method, I have to adhere to the ShortDateFormat or
LongDateFormat as defined on my computer. IBO then translates this format
to a format that Interbase accepts.

So, regardless of what Interbase accepts, I always use dd.mm.yyyy, which is
the most common format in Norway.

But you really don't need to know this, because the good part is that your
problem is easily solved. Just use
.AsDateTime:=EncodeDateTime(<allparameters>)

HTH,
Set