Question

I need to create a function that returns a table of continuous dates. I would pass in a min & max date.

I expect it to be able to be called like this:

SELECT * FROM GetDates('01/01/2009', '12/31/2009')

I currently have a stored proc that does this, but requirements changed and now I need to do include the returned data from within a union:

 with mycte as
(
     select cast(@minDate as datetime) DateValue
     union all
     select DateValue + 1
     from    mycte   
     where   DateValue + 1 <= @maxDate
 )
 select DateValue
 from    mycte
option (maxrecursion 1000)

The problem, however, is that I need to set the recursion to be greater than 100. According to a post by Gail Erickson [MS] on eggheadcafe, this is not currently supported.

Without creating a real (not temporary) table with just date in it, is there a way to do this?

I am using SqlServer2005.

Answer 1

Your best option is to actually have a physical table of dates. There aren’t that many for even long periods, and will be much faster than materializing them on-the-fly from temp tables or recursive ctes.