The producer operator is responsible for reformatting the DateTime data that is associated with VARDATE columns before sending the data records to the data stream. The DataConnector and ODBC operators are the only producer operators that support this functionality. If any other producer operator is associated with a TPT schema object that includes VARDATE columns, reformatting will not occur. In this case, VARDATE columns are equivalent to VARCHAR columns of the same size.
VARDATE formatting does not affect consumer operators.
Aside from those cases discussed in the Usability Features section, all columns of incoming data with type VARDATE must conform to the format specified by the FORMATIN string of that column. If the formatting of a given row differs significantly from the specified FORMATIN string, or if the desired conversion from FORMATIN to FORMATOUT is unsuccessful due to a lack of data, a conversion failure occurs.