Tibco General Interface XML Mapper using different data types?

Question

I have a matrix that is mapped to a .NET web service via the XML mapper tool in general interface. I have two columns in particular that I need to sort accurately (date and time columns), however the XML mapper automatically sets their data-type to string values. Obviously, when you sort string dates they may jump around because it doesn't sort by value it sorts by the alpha numeric representation of the values. Is it possible for GI to set the values to date object values when parsing through the returned XML data in order to place those values into the columns in their correct data types?

Or, is there any way for me to add flags in my XML data that show that these results are in a different data type than string?

These are the tools that I am using: Tibco/Dojo Foundation General Interface 3.9 Visual C# Web Service .NET Framework 4.0 Visual Studio 2010

Answer 1

Scratch that, I figured it out. I found that there is a 'sort attribute' CDF tag that you can apply to each column. I converted my back end data to UNIX time and sent them back as a separate XML tag to apply to each row as a sort value and everything sorts great now.