Question

I need to retrieve data by selected dates. There is one major detail: user can select two days one after another, and then it can skip some days, and then select another ones.

What is the best way to pass selected dates into a stored procedure and organize filter by such date ranges?

For example, I have the table with the following structure:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Events](
    [ID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [EventDate] [datetime] NOT NULL,
    [Amount] [float] NOT NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_Events] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
    [ID] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

With the following data:

INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-01-01 10:00', 12)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-01-01 11:00', 154)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-01-01 12:00', 4)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-02-01 10:00', 132)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-02-01 11:00', 212)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-03-01 10:00', 712)
INSERT [dbo].[Events] ([EventDate], [Amount]) VALUES ('2012-03-01 20:00', 892)

User wants to retrieve data with Event Date from 2012-01-01 10:00 and 2012-01-01 11:00,
from 2012-03-01 09:00 to 2012-03-01 19:00, etc.

User can select different count of intervals.

Answer 1

If you want to send multiple “identical” parameters to a stored procedure, that would usually indicate that you should use Table Valued Parameters (TVPs).

Within the stored procedure, you can treat the TVP as a table variable, so your query would look like:

SELECT
    *
FROM
    Events e
        inner join
    @MyTVP t
        on
            e.EventDate between t.FromDate and t.ToDate

Assuming your TVP has two columns, FromDate and ToDate with obvious definitions.