I have a fairly weird 'bug' with a simple query, and I vaguely remember reading the reason for it somewhere a long time ago but would love someone to refresh my memory.
The table is a basic ID, Datetime table.
The query is:
select ID, Datetime from Table where Datetime <= '2010-03-31 23:59:59'
The problem is that the query results include results where the Datetime is '2010-04-01 00:00:00'. The next day. Which it shouldn't.
Anyone?
Cheers
Moo
Take a look at How Are Dates Stored In SQL Server? and How Does Between Work With Dates In SQL Server?
If that is a smalldatetime it has 1 minute precision so if rounds up, for datetime it is 300 miliseconds
example
DECLARE @d DATETIME
SELECT @d = '2001-12-31 23:59:59.999'
SELECT @d
2002-01-01 00:00:00.000
DECLARE @d DATETIME
SELECT @d = '2001-12-31 23:59:59.998'
SELECT @d
2001-12-31 23:59:59.997
Always use less than next day at midnight, in your case
< '20100401'
It's very odd that you are seeing that; I don't know why. But I will suggest that you write the query this way instead:
select ID, Datetime from Table where Datetime < '2010-04-01'
try doing it like:
select ID, Datetime from Table where Datetime < '2010-04-01'
I always floor the datetime and increment the day and just use "<" less than.
to floor a datetime to just the day use:
SELECT DATEADD(day,DATEDIFF(day,0, GETDATE() ),0)
you can easily increment a datetime by using addition:
SELECT GETDATE()+1
by using the '23:59:59' you can miss rows, try it out:
DECLARE @YourTable table (RowID int, DateOf datetime)
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (1,'2010-03-31 10:00')
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (2,'2010-03-31')
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (3,'2010-03-31 23:59:59')
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (4,'2010-03-31 23:59:59.887')
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (5,'2010-04-01')
INSERT INTO @YourTable VALUES (6,'2010-04-01 10:00')
select * from @YourTable where DateOf <= '2010-03-31 23:59:59'
OUTPUT
RowID DateOf
----------- -----------------------
1 2010-03-31 10:00:00.000
2 2010-03-31 00:00:00.000
3 2010-03-31 23:59:59.000
(3 row(s) affected
this query is wrong, because it does not find the missed rowID=4 record.
if you try to fix this with:
select * from @YourTable where DateOf <= '2010-03-31 23:59:59.999'
then RowID=5 will be included as well, which is wrong.