From a technical standpoint, I am much more comfortable driving retention based on a date field than a 4-charater text field or a numeric field.  I have seen strange things end up in those 4-digit year fields (examples - "1011" instead of "2011," "11" instead of "2011," "n/a," "keep," etc.).  What happens if you try to execute a query for anything more than 10 years old?  When the system encounters the above examples, things start to blow up and guys like me start losing their hair.

I think their request is reasonable provided they can properly convert the value, "2004" to "1/1/2004."  I would ask what would happen if there are any errors when they convert your 4-digit field to date format.  It may make sense to require a report of before and after values.  This will reinforce how serious the date conversion is and will allow you to spot check their work.

Mark Graves
[log in to unmask]
Omaha, NE
402-301-1999

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