Passing A Timestamp Datatype Column To A Variable And Back

After several hours of trying, I trow the towel in the ring and come here to ask a question.

Source system uses a timestamp column in the transaction tables. which is equal to a non-nullable binary(8) datatype (sql 2000 bol).

What I want to do is get the timestamp at the start of the transfer and at the end of the transfer of data. and store these in a controltable

I try to do this in 2 sql execute tasks:

sqltask 1: "select @@DBTS AS SourceTimestamp" and map the resultset to a variable. Here come's the first problem what variable type to take ?

DBNULL works (meaning it doesn't give errors) (BTW: is there a way to put a variable as a watch when debugging sql tasks ?)

INT64 and UINT64 don't work error message that types for column and parameter are different

STRING works

Then I want to store this variable back in a table of a different data source

sqltask2: "insert into controltable values(getdate(), ?)" and make an input parameter that takes the previous timestamp ...

if I took DBNULL as a type for the variable there doesn't seem to be a single parameter type that works ???

if i take STRING as a type for the variable I have to modify the sql to do the explicit conversion from string to binary so I change CAST(? as binary). It doesn't return any error but the value stored in the table is 0x00000000000 and not the actual timestamp.



Any help on this one ? Why are the INT64/Bigint not working here, you can perfectly do a convert(bigint, timestampfield) in sql ?

How came the SQL datatypes, and the variable datatypes, parameter datatypes are so badly alligned to each other (and all seem to use different names) ?

tx for any help

Dirk