Datetime fields are represented in MS SQL as 8 byte floating point numbers, and the return value in an SQL query is a 17 byte string, but the module php3_mssql seems to interpret them a an 8 byte string.

When executing a command similar to this,

list(.., $date, ...) = mssql_fetch_row($result);

you get a $date that contains the first 8 bytes of the return value instead of the actual date string. This means that (at least on my system), $date contains "Mar 21 1", whereas the return value from MS SQL is "Mar 21 1999 21:00".

date() totally gives up when giving it $date, and returns Jan 01 1970. The only solution is to execute a slightly modified SQL statement, converting the datetime field to a varchar using CONVERT, like this:

SELECT CONVERT(varchar(17), datefield) FROM table

This will return a 17 byte string that php3_mssql doesn't fuck up.

It doesn't like a system-specific problem to me, but anyway: I'm running NT 4.0, SQL Server 6.5, PHP for Win32 3.0.6 using IIS 4.0.