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Asked: 2026-05-11T05:04:18+00:00

According to cdonner , in his answer here and on his blog . He

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According to cdonner, in his answer here and on his blog.

He claims that BETWEEN with date yields inconsistent results

From his blog:

select     case when '9/1/08' between '9/1/08' and '9/15/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s1,     case when '9/1/08' between '8/28/08' and '9/1/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s2  s1   s2 ---- ---- in   in  (1 row(s) affected) select     case when '1/1/08' between '1/1/08' and '2/1/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s1,     case when '1/1/08' between '12/31/07' and '1/1/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s2  s1   s2 ---- ---- in   out  (1 row(s) affected

Notice that the S2 answer in the second query show ‘Out’ when clearly the date should be in.

According to cdonner, the reason this is so is because:

[the] least significant digit of the DateTime type in SQL is 3 msec

I think the cause is much simpler than that. I think it’s because he’s using strings and not dates in his query.

Please excuse my SQLServer-ish. I speak mainly Oracle, so this may be ugly. But when I take his query that -proves- there’s an issue and replace his strings with datetime variables I get the correct output.

DECLARE @Jan108 datetime DECLARE @Feb108 datetime DECLARE @Dec3107 datetime  SET @Jan108 = '1/1/08' SET @Feb108 = '2/1/08' SET @Dec3107 = '12/31/07'  select     case when @Jan108 between @Jan108 and @Feb108         then 'in' else 'out' end as s1,     case when @Jan108 between @Dec3107 and @Jan108         then 'in' else 'out' end as s2

Which is correct?

NB: this isn’t an attempt to settle an argument or to start a flame war. I truly want to understand if SQL Server BETWEEN is less functional than the Oracle BETWEEN. WE have no such issue in Oracle.

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1 Answer

  1. In Oracle:

    select     case when '1/1/08' between '1/1/08' and '2/1/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s1,     case when '1/1/08' between '12/31/07' and '1/1/08'         then 'in' else 'out' end as s2 FROM dual  in out

    You are comparing strings here, not dates.

    There is nothing BETWEEN 12/31/07 and 1/1/08, as 2 goes after / in ASCII

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