Question

I’d like to check if there is anything to return given a number to check against, and if that query returns no entries, increase the number until an entry is reached and display that entry. Currently, the code looks like this :

        SELECT * 
    FROM news
    WHERE DATEDIFF(day, date, getdate() ) <= #url.d#
    ORDER BY date desc

where #url.d# is an integer being passed through (say 31). If that returns no results, I’d like to increase the number stored in #url.d# by 1 until an entry is found.

Answer 1

This kind of incremental querying is just not efficient. You’ll get better results by saying – “I’ll never need more than 100 results so give me these” :

SELECT top 100 *
FROM news
ORDER BY date desc

Then filtering further on the client side if you want only a particular day’s items (such as the items with a common date as the first item in the result).

Or, you could transform your multiple query request into a two query request:

DECLARE
  @theDate datetime,
  @theDate2 datetime

SET @theDate = (SELECT Max(date) FROM news)
  --trim the time off of @theDate
SET @theDate = DateAdd(dd, DateDiff(dd, 0, @theDate), 0)
SET @theDate2 = DateAdd(dd, 1, @theDate)

SELECT *
FROM news
WHERE @theDate <= date AND date < @theDate2
ORDER BY date desc