SQL Server Cannot Call Methods on Date

Question

I\'ve got a DATETIME column in a SQL Server 2008 table called ShiftDate. I want to convert this to a DATE column in a query:

SELECT     ID, ScheduleID, Shift         


        

Answer 1

It seems to be a real bug as mentioned above by https://stackoverflow.com/users/464923/will, inherited from MS Access old days with all it's inconveniences, You have just to ignore the error message and save your view then run it in a regular SSMS window, no error will be thrown .

Answer 2

This bug is still present in Management Studio 2016, seems for now the only solution is to cast to a varchar and live with it if you want to use the query designer.

Answer 3

From my experience, the error can be ignored. Just save the view and query it outside the Design/"View editor" window (in a new query window) and it will work.

Answer 4

You can use the Convert option instead.

SELECT     ID, ScheduleID, ShiftDate, CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), ShiftDate,101) AS ProductionDate
FROM       dbo.ScheduleResults

You can look at the various options of date formats here.

Answer 5

You are correct, it is a bug in SSMS. I'm using SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 and when I try to create a View using the built-in designer, I get the same error message as you:

SQL Execution Error
Error Source: .Net SqlClient Data Provider
Error Message: Cannot call methods on date.

As @Aaron Bertrand mentioned, to solve the issue, select 'New Query' and create the View in the Query window. For your code, it would be:

CREATE VIEW myView AS
SELECT     ID, ScheduleID, ShiftDate, CAST(ShiftDate AS DATE) AS ProductionDate
FROM       dbo.ScheduleResults

Answer 6

The problem is with the name ShiftDate of the attribute in the underlying table. When renamed to something that does not contain the word Date as the last characters, the view works. Try renaming to ShiftDateDD for example.