In the thread below entitled "Question on initialize method (p. 25 of WDJ Tutorial #3 ) ", Christian Benoit agreed that there is an error on p.12 of Tutorial #3.
So to correct this error, I went back and defined Birthday as a simple type using the built-in type date instead of the simple type string (because Christian suggested that this change will get rid of the error message which results from coding the line given on page 25 in the initialize method:
wdContext.currentContextElement().setBirthday(new Date(0));
The problem is, when I do this, I get a different error message as follows:
"The method setBirthday(java.sql.date) in the type
IPrivateForm.IContextElement is not applicable for
the arguments (java.util.Date)"
I remember seeing this choice come up, but I don't remember where. So where do I indicate that I want java.sql.date and not java.util.date ???????