I need to find the last occurence of a date (in my case a static date 1st of may)
I made this which works but i know this can be done in a much smarter way
declare @lastmay date
set @lastmay = DATEADD(YY,YEAR(GETDATE())-2000,'20000501')
IF @lastmay <= GETDATE()
BEGIN
SET @lastmay = DATEADD(YY,-1,@lastmay)
END
When you are working with dates in SQL it can be a real help to have a Dates utility table on your database that you can then compare against.
This article discusses it well: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/datacenter/simplify-sql-server-2005-queries-with-a-dates-table/326
If you implemented that your queries could become quite simple such as (using columns from article)
Declare @lastmay date
Select @lastmay = DateFull
from DateLookup
where MonthNumber = 5
and MonthDay = 1
and Datefull < getdate()