How to account for empty dates

I am returning an empty string from SQL to a monthcalendar field so that it would be "blank" in the grid, i.e. the user did not enter a date.

However, when I want to edit that row now, it hangs due to the monthcalendar not recognizing a date (empty string).

Is there a way to somehow set the monthcalendar to today's date if the datamapping coming from SQL is a blank empty string?

I tried to setValue using today's date in the beginedit action. It seemed to work until I click the cancel button, the value remained.

If the value started out as blank, I still want to make it blank when cancelling the event.

Any thoughts?

Hi, I am rephrasing this question.
Basically, in the gridgrouping control, how would you enable the monthcalendar control to automatically show today's date during edit mode, just like when you are adding a new row. But instead this is in edit mode of a blank column.

THanks.

Ivan

Ok, I found out how to go about this.

If you are using monthcalendar in the grid, set the CellValueType="System.DateTime". This currently resolves my issue.