Question

I have a date stored within a text field with other text. Why didn’t they just put this in a date field? I have no idea, but I do not have the power to change it now. Elsewhere in the code, I am doing this to get the records where this date is in a certain range. It works fine.

For Each i As InventoryItem In inventoryList
  index = i.Notes.IndexOf("on {") + 4
  scanned_dt = i.Notes.Substring(index, i.Notes.Length - index - 1)
  If Date.Parse(scanned_dt) >= startDate And Date.Parse(scanned_dt) <= endDate Then
    ...

I am now trying to get a total of items for a certain date range.
This sql statement works to get the total for all dates. How can I update the Where clause to only count the items where i.Notes contains a date between startDate and endDate

Dim sql As String = "Select COUNT(inv_PartNum) from lester.inventory i join lester.vendor v on v.vendor_ID = i.vendor_ID Where v.vendor_Name = '" + vendorName + "' AND i.inv_Desc LIKE '%" + size + "%'"

*EDITED*
I came up with this sql select statement:

SELECT COUNT(i.inv_PartNum) FROM cdms.lester.inventory AS I
join CDMS.lester.vendor AS v on v.vendor_ID = i.vendor_ID Where v.vendor_Name = 'JVE-285' 
AND CONVERT(DATETIME,
SUBSTRING(i.inv_Notes, CharIndex('on {', i.inv_Notes)+4, len(i.inv_Notes)-(CharIndex('on {', i.inv_Notes) + 4)
),101) BETWEEN '01-01-2011' AND '04-04-2011'

But I am getting this error:
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range datetime value.

In trying to figure it out I created the following sql select statement:

SELECT * FROM (
SELECT i.inv_Notes, 
CONVERT(DATETIME,SUBSTRING(i.inv_Notes, CharIndex('on {',i.inv_Notes)+4,LEN(i.inv_Notes)-(CharIndex('on {', i.inv_Notes) + 4)),101) AS d
FROM cdms.lester.inventory AS i
join CDMS.lester.vendor AS v ON v.vendor_ID = i.vendor_ID WHERE v.vendor_Name = 'JVE-285') AS s

My inv_Notes column contains a string like “Assigned to Tool Trailer {JVE-285} on {4/8/2011}”

When I run the query as shown above, I get my inv_Notes column along with the date column. The dates all show in this format “2011-04-08 00:00:00.000” and no errors are thrown.

However as soon as I add a WHERE clause, I get the error: The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range datetime value.

I’ve tried formatting the date every which way, but always get the error…

WHERE s.d > CONVERT(DATETIME, '2011-1-1', 101)

WHERE s.d < GetDate()

WHERE s.d > '20110101'

WHERE s.d >= '2011-01-01'

WHERE s.d >= '01-01-2011'

WHERE s.d > '01/01/2011'

EDIT
I’ve also tried
WHERE s.d IS NOT NULL
and get the same error. This obviously isn’t working the way I think it’s working b/c at the point of the WHERE, the conversion should have already successfully happened.

SOLUTION
Got this working

SELECT * FROM (
SELECT i.inv_Notes,
SUBSTRING(i.inv_Notes, CharIndex('} on {',i.inv_Notes)+6,LEN(i.inv_Notes)-(CharIndex('} on {', i.inv_Notes) + 6))
AS d
FROM cdms.lester.inventory AS i
join CDMS.lester.vendor AS v ON v.vendor_ID = i.vendor_ID WHERE v.vendor_Name = 'JVE-285') AS s
WHERE PARSENAME(REPLACE(s.d, '/', '.'), 1)+
RIGHT('00'+PARSENAME(REPLACE(s.d, '/', '.'), 3),2)+
RIGHT('00'+PARSENAME(REPLACE(s.d, '/', '.'),2),2) BETWEEN '20110407' AND '20110409'

I tried to cast that to int and do an integer comparison but then I get an error. Figured out that the problem was that some of the inv_Notes fields contain data like “Item Added {3/11/2011}” None of those meet the conditions for the inner select, so in my mind if it’s not selected in the inner select, it shouldn’t be a problem for the condition of the outer select. However, it was trying to cast 2011{311 to int and throwing an error. I’m sure it was trying to cast that to date and that’s why I had the previous problems.

Answer 1

Try adding something similar to this WHERE clause into your statement:

WHERE CAST(SUBSTRING(Notes, CHARINDEX(Notes, 'on {') + 4, Length?) AS Date) BETWEEN StartDate And EndDate

The idea been that you extract the relevant part of the string by combining the SubString and CharIndex methods, and then convert this expression to a date format so that it can be used with the Between Operator.

Best of Luck

Part 2 Update:

As you have been able to select the date but not use it in the where clause, I suggest using it as a select statement and then wrapping this in another statement e.g:

SELECT *
FROM
(SELECT CAST(SUBSTRING(Notes, CHARINDEX(Notes, 'on {') + 4, Length?) AS Date) AS dtmNotes)
WHERE dtmNotes BETWEEN Start And End

This is just to illustrate, but include the whole of your first select statement in the wrapping.