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How To Search For Date and Time Values Using SQL Server 2000

SQL Server 2000

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parimengal039
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2 views

How To Search For Date and Time Values Using SQL Server 2000

SQL Server 2000

Uploaded by

parimengal039
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to Search for Date and Time Values Using SQL Server 2000

Before you can effectively query date/time (or temporal) data, you have to know
something about how date/time values are stored. In this article, Bryan demonstrates the
various ways in which to query an SQL Server to successfully retrieve the records you
may be seeking.

Suppose you’re writing a query to find all the invoices that were written on January 6,
2003. You know from the control totals that 122 invoices were written that day. But
when you run this query:

SELECT * FROM Invoices


WHERE InvoiceDate = '2003-01-06'

The result set is empty. What’s going on?

How to Search for Date and Time Values Using SQL Server 2000 - How Dates and
Times are Stored in SQL Server

Before you can effectively query date/time (or temporal) data, you have to know
something about how date/time values are stored. SQL Server supports two date/time
data types: datetime and smalldatetime. The difference between the two is the amount of
storage used. Datetime uses 8 bytes of storage, while smalldatetime uses only 4 bytes.
For this reason, datetime can represent date/time values within a wider range and with
more precision than smalldatetime. These differences are summarized in the table below.
Type Minimum Maximum Precision
Dec 31, 9999
Jan 1, 1753 To the nearest
datetime 23:59:59.997
midnight 3.33 milliseconds
(0.003 seconds until midnight)
Jun 6, 2079
Jan 1, 1900 To the nearest
smalldatetime 23:59
midnight minute
(1 minute until midnight)

Both datetime and smalldatetime represent the date and time as a value that’s equal to the
number of days in relationship to a base date. In SQL Server, that base date is midnight
on January 1, 1900. As you can see in the table, the smalldatetime type can only represent
dates from this base date on. In contrast, the datetime type can also represent dates that
are before January 1, 1900. To do that, it stores those values as negative numbers.

To visualize how date/time values are stored, you can think of them as consisting of two
parts. The integer portion represents the number of whole days since January 1, 1900.
The fractional portion represents the fraction of a day that’s passed since midnight. For
example, the date/time value representing noon on January 4, 1900 is stored as 3.5. In
this case, 3 represents three full days since the base date and 0.5 represents one half of a
day between midnight and noon. To see this, submit the following query:

SELECT CAST(CAST('1900-01-04 12:00' AS datetime) AS float)

Note: The CAST function explicitly changes the data type of a value as specified. So in
this statement, the inner CAST changes the string literal '1900-01-04 12:00' to a value of
data type datetime. Then, the outer CAST changes that datetime value to a value of data
type float. The final result is a floating-point representation of the datetime value that
represents noon on January 4, 1900.

So far, so good. But the problems that crop up in querying date/time data are caused by
confusion over two fundamental facts that aren’t so obvious. First, date/time data types
are approximate numerics, not exact numerics. Second, date/time data types can’t store a
date without a time or a time without a date.

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