As a developer, I think the single biggest lack that I see in many of my fellow IT professionals it that they have a mindset of becoming expert in a...

I'm one of those people who have to be able to set up & configure SQL as an incidental part of my "real job", and personally I'm all for safety...

Firstly I'd echo Jeff's concern ... you're attempting to work around the problem.

However, putting that aside ... what's wrong with:

Declare @MDate VarChar(10) -- I'm assuming its a varchar ....

Set @MDate...

You are assuming that "competent" includes ethics? (and common sense)

A depressingly large percentage of "professionals" I know, who deliver well on what they are paid for, seem to lack either...