DateTime data type casting rules

[Tejaskumar_Darji]

Hello,

We've noticed a data type cast difference in V6.4 with V6.8 and later versions.


Here my DateTime data item is empty and no value is set. When I save that to a Text data item is populates a kind of default value "1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM" even though the original DataTime is empty which sounds weird.

While doing the same thing in BP V6.4 it returns blank in the Text data item which makes sense.

Has anybody seen this before? Because this is causing process failure in V6.8 which was designed in V6.4 because the expression is the same but Blue prism behavior for data conversion has changed.

I checked all release notes but could not find anything regarding this in known issues or so, hence looking for guidance and help.


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Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji
Sr. RPA Consultant-Automation Developer
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[Tejaskumar_Darji]

One more thing to add here.

If I check the Length of the blank DateTime data item then also it returns 20 as output while actually, it is null. (Looks like it considers the default value always)



This sounds fishy right!

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Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji
Sr. RPA Consultant-Automation Developer
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[John__Carter]

Hi Tejaskumar - I'm guessing the 'length=20' is a symptom of the first behaviour. The within the execution of the Len function there will be an automatic cast to text, which as you have observed, is taking a blank datetime and resulting in a 20 character string. If you raise ticket the support team will question the product engineers on where/when/why this change in behaviour came about. I'll also do a bit of digging to see if I can find anything.

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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