Add constraint to SQL Server with condition - sql

Question

Consider this table
CREATE TABLE employee
(
employee_number INT PRIMARY KEY,
employee_name NVARCHAR(100),
employee_year INT,
manager_employee_number INT,
salary INT,
FOREIGN KEY(manager_employee_number)
REFERENCES employee(employee_number)
);
I want to add a constraint which every employee's employee_year is less than his manager's and we know every manager is an employee himself. So I wrote this:
ALTER TABLE employee
ADD CONSTRAINT CK_EmployeeYearLessThanManager
CHECK (employee_year <= (SELECT m.employee_year
FROM employee
WHERE m.employee_number = manager_employee_number ));
I get this error:
Subqueries are not allowed in this context. Only scalar expressions are allowed
Is there any possible way to write such a constraint?

Answer 1

As it can be seen from the error message, you cannot implement it as a subquery, but as a work around you can create a scalar-valued user defined function and call it from the check constraint. Here is an example:
CREATE TABLE employee
(
employee_number INT PRIMARY KEY,
employee_name NVARCHAR(100),
employee_year INT,
manager_employee_number INT,
salary INT,
FOREIGN KEY(manager_employee_number)
REFERENCES employee(employee_number)
);
GO
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.get_manager_hire_year(#manager_employee_number INT)
RETURNS INT
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE #e_year int;
SELECT #e_year = employee_year
FROM employee
WHERE employee_number = #manager_employee_number;
RETURN #e_year
END
GO
ALTER TABLE employee
ADD CONSTRAINT CK_EmployeeYearLessThanManager
CHECK (employee_year <= dbo.get_manager_hire_year(manager_employee_number))