Now I did a little testing with the BIGINT value to deteremine the maximum BIGINT value that could be converted to DATETIME as follows:

DECLARE @b-2 BIGINT

SET @b-2 = 2958457

WHILE @b-2 < = 2958464

BEGIN

SELECT convert(VARCHAR(20),CAST(@B AS DATETIME),101),@B

SET @b-2 = @b-2 + 1

END

The last value BEFORE the error message was: 2958463

In your code if you will be attempting to convert a BIGINT value to a date use something like :

SELECT convert(VARCHAR(20),CAST(@B AS DATETIME),101) WHERE @b-2 < 2958463

In order to clarify or confuse here are the result of additional code.

DECLARE @b-2 BIGINT

SET @b-2 = 41046

SELECT @b-2 AS 'Bigint',CAST(@B AS BINARY(8)) AS 'Binary 8',convert(VARCHAR(20)

,CAST(@B AS DATETIME),101) AS 'Date'

SELECT CAST(GETDATE() AS BIGINT) AS 'Bigint'

,CAST(GETDATE() AS BINARY(8)) AS 'Binary 8',GETDATE() AS 'Date'

Result:

Bigint Binary 8 Date

41046 0x000000000000A056 05/19/2012

41046 0x0000A0560090F582 2012-05-19 08:47:46.780

To clarify read more:

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/2004/datetime-datatype/