Question

I have inherited a large SQL Server database that has a certain table that has a certain date column that is a varchar(8) datatype in the yyyyMMdd date string format. Why it isn’t a datetime datatype or something similar is beyond me. (maybe to save space? Legacy db ported to SQL Server long ago?)

Withouting getting too flustered over the date wanna-be field, grabbing rows using a single date from this column is pretty straight forward using the Entity Framework (DBContext w/LINQ) as shown below:

var rows = cxt.TableOfRandomDateColumn.Where(x => x.Date == myDateStr).ToList();

That’s about as easy as it gets. However, what if I wanted to grab a range of dates from this column? What would be the best way to go about doing something like that?

Answer 1

Dates in the yyyyMMdd format are alphabetically as well as numerically ordered correctly, so you can just use a range selector as you would for any other string column.

Try this:

var rows = cxt.TableOfRandomDateColumn.Where(x => x.Date >= myStrDateStr && x.Date <= myStpDateStr).ToList();