Smalldatetime Comparison Between Local Server And Linked Server Fails?

Hi all,

I have the following select that is designed to compare values on parallel servers.SELECT TA1.EPS, TA1.Sales, TA1.Income, TA1.EarningsReportDate,TA2.EPS, TA2.Sales, TA2.Income, TA2.EarningsReportDate
FROM TradeAnalysis.dbo.SalesIncome_Quarterly AS TA1
FULL OUTER JOIN L_TA_MIRROR.TradeAnalysis.dbo.SalesIncome_Quarterl y AS TA2
ON ((TA1.OSID = TA2.OSID) AND (TA1.QtrYear = TA2.QtrYear) AND (TA1.QuarterNo = TA2.QuarterNo))
WHERE(BINARY_CHECKSUM(TA1.EPS, TA1.Sales, TA1.Income, TA1.EarningsReportDate) <>
BINARY_CHECKSUM(TA2.EPS, TA2.Sales, TA2.Income, TA2.EarningsReportDate))Disregard the full outer join, it is necessary in the full select, I have just pared it down to show here and for testing. A standard join will also have the same result.

The trouble is that the comparison (the BINARY_CHECKSUM) is failing on the EarningsReportDate column, which is defined on BOTH servers in DUPLICATE databases as a smalldatetime.

The data is actually the same in both rows of each table (as is all the other data being compared). What I am seeing is that the select returns milliseconds on the LINKED server (the L_TA_MIRROR reference), but not on the local database?

for example,
Local server data returned in above select is 2000-01-28 00:00:00
Linked server data returned in above select is 2000-01-28 00:00:00.000

Wassup with THAT? If I remove the date from the select/comparison, it says everything matches, so I am pretty sure this is the culprit that is causing the BINARY_CHECKSUM comparison to fail.

Is there some setting that I need to put on the Linked Server reference that says "treat this as the smalldatetime data type it IS, dammit!"????

I can get by the issue if I replace the date reference in the linked server part of the select with CAST(TA2.EarningsReportDate AS smalldatetime) but why do I have to do this?

Yes, I am SURE both servers have the column in question defined as a smalldatetime, as running the same select on either server causes the same failure, but only when referencing the LINKED server column.