Bug #31263 date_format() returns System.byte

• Submitted: 27 Sep 2007 21:57
• Modified: 9 Oct 2007 19:02
• Reporter: Sheeraz Fazal
• Status: Not a Bug
• Category: Connector / NET
• Severity: S2 (Serious)
• Version: 5.1.3
• OS: Other (Windows XP)
• CPU Architecture: Any

[27 Sep 2007 21:57] Sheeraz Fazal

Description:
Following query 
select date_format(now(),'%m/%d/%Y') as start_date from dual 
returns System.byte when ToString() is applied on the DataRow.

How to repeat:
I use Fill function of to populate DataSet object and it returns single row.

ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][0].ToString(); This line worked fine with 5.0.8 but not anymore in 5.1.3

Suggested fix:
Don't know

[28 Sep 2007 20:20] Sheeraz Fazal

I have produced it on MySQL server 5.0.27-community-nt.

[9 Oct 2007 19:02] Reggie Burnett

This is not a bug in the connector.  The problem here is that in older versions of the server (such as 5.0.27), some functions such as date_format returned its value as a binary string.  Starting with 5.1, Connector/Net will by default respect these binary flags so with 5.1.3 this value is being returned as varbinary.  We added a connection string option called 'respect binary flags'.  Set this value to false and it will behave like older versions of Connector/Net where varstring values that are marked as binary will continue to be returned as strings.

Note that newer builds of the mysql server has fixed date_format to return a regular string instead of a binary string.