Wednesday, June 26, 2013

GetBytes error when using a DATE column

Quick troubleshooting post. Given this error from a colleague upon execution of a pretty simple function that used a DATE column:

An error occurred while executing batch. Error message is: Invalid attempt to GetBytes on column 'RelDate'.  The GetBytes function can only be used on columns of type Text, NText, or Image.

I couldn't reproduce the problem on my machine - the same function worked fine for me.  Checked all his query execution settings and didn't see anything, and then he realized he was running SQL Management Studio 2005 connected to a 2008 R2 instance.  As soon as he fired up SMS 2008 R2, the function worked fine.