Question

According to MSDN the range for date datatype is January 1, 1753, through December 31, 9999

In SQL2005 the following is interesting:

declare @date as datetime
SET @date = '1/1/1901 12:00:00 AM'
SELECT @date

if (isnull(@date,0) = 0) SELECT 'date is null' ELSE SELECT 'date not null'

change the date to '1/1/1901 12:00:00 AM' and suddenly isnull(@date,0) is 0.

What am I missing?

(Edit) fixed daterange for sql2005, link to sql2005 BOL

Answer 1

Try this:

declare @date as datetime
SET @date = '1/1/1901 12:00:00 AM'

SELECT @date, CASE WHEN @date IS NULL THEN 'date is null' ELSE 'date not null' END