I am in the same boat on a project. It is said to be "bad design" to allow nulls and you should avoid doing so at all cost. Visual Basic shows the actual dates in the database so I have many fields with the date 12/31/9999 11:59:59 PM which is the max date. It seems that if something is such bad practice they would accommodate it better than they do. I will be watching this topic for answers, also if I find an answer I will be sure to post it here.