Forum Discussion

robarivas's avatar
robarivas
Post Patron
8 years ago

Dates coming in as Datetime

I'm pulling some date fields from IBM DB2. Need to pull the data by providing a SQL statement (long story, don't ask). However, when pulling data with a SQL statement Power Query adds 12:00:00 AM, which then forces me to have to change data type from Datetime to Date. This is a big problem because Power Query won't fold data type conversion back to DB2. Any thoughts on what I can do here? In my SQL statement I tried wrapping the date fields with the Date function but it didn't help.

Need Help

3 Replies

  • v-fengyz-msft's avatar
    v-fengyz-msft
    Helper I
    8 years ago

    robarivas

     

    Thanks for your question.

     

    I can reproduce this issue when using IBM or Microsoft driver to retrieve data from DB2. As you stated, Power BI DeskTop will add the 12:00:00 AM for date type automatically when using SQL Statement.

     

    Based on my test, you can use ODBC driver with SQL Statement as a workaround, which works properly.

     

    And also, you can give an feedback to Microsoft on Power BI Ideas.

     

    Thanks for your understanding and support.

     

    Regards,

    Pirlo Zhang 

     

    • robarivas's avatar
      robarivas
      Post Patron
      8 years ago

      Thank you v-fengyz-msft

       

      Would you happen to know which of the 3 methods gives the overall best experience: ODBC, Microsoft driver, or IBM driver? Is there somewhere one could look to learn about the differences that exist, if any, amongst these three? I'm particularly interested in knowing which option does the most Query Folding. At a minimum I'd love to know about the differences between ODBC and the Microsoft driver since I've never been able to successfully connect using the IBM driver anyway.

      • v-fengyz-msft's avatar
        v-fengyz-msft
        Helper I
        8 years ago

        robarivas

         

        Sorry, there are no official doucuments on these drivers to clarify the difference.

         

        In my experience, in Power BI Desktop, I guess IBM driver  should be .NET oledb driver which produced by IBM. Microsoft driver represents Microsoft OLE DB Provider for DB2. 

         

        From performance perspective, to extract big data using these drivers, in general the order of speed is: ODBC<IBM<Microsoft OLE DB Provider for DB2(fastest) when ignore other potential impact(e.g. network, I/O, memory..). 

         

        However, In Power BI Desktop, in general we develop the report using small data and write the data into cache so we don't need to be afraid of the performance. Just select which works properly.

         

        Regards,

        Pirlo Zhang