My users enter parameters into an sql query from a front end system. I have successfully passed strings before, but I would like to pass a date variable now. My SQL is as follows:
SELECT sum(CASE WHEN P.SNAPSHOT_DATE = '{?startdate}' THEN P.MKT_VAL ELSE 0 END)
FROM P
The front end has some sql that defines what startdate is.
As I say, with strings, this works a dream. Unfortunately my compiler is expecting a date and so I get the following error:
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.
I have tried surrounding my variable with cast and convert to no luck.
I think in your query, when you get the user input convert that input to a date type ie using SQL
Set #userinput= select CAST(#userinput as date)
On the front end try to limit the amount of manual inputing of data by the user, by giving them the ability to select a date from a calendar rather than manually typing in the date, that should reduce errors I think. Let me know if the converting thing works! :)
Related
I have a query that was working fine before a server migration and now is not working. I'm trying to convert all dates to a specific month and year, but I keep getting this error:
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.
Looking into the data, there are no null values in InputDate, which is a date data type column. When I run the Concat() function everything is formatted as 'YYYYMMdd', yet both CAST and CONVERT fail with the same error.
Is there an issue with my query that I'm not seeing?
SELECT RandoSTUFF,
DATEADD(day,2,CAST(CONCAT('2023','02',FORMAT(InputDate,'dd')) AS date)) AS MovedDate
FROM a_table_
I expect the issue is you have date values near the end of their months, and you're trying to compose the equivalent values for February, which is shorter.
So if you have an InputDate value of, say, 2022-12-31 and run the code in the question, it will extract the 31 and concat it with the other values, and you'll end up trying to do this:
CAST('20230231' as Date)
Of course, there is no such date.
As it is, it's not clear whether you want such an input to map to February 28 or March 3. To fix this, you'll need to rethink the problem so you only try to map to valid dates, and ensure the final result is more clearly defined. This is one of the many reasons it's almost always better to use Date/time functions instead of composing dates from strings.
Just trying to clean up some functions someone else has done in a postgres.
Would anyone know what the following does? It was working, but the date format changed when it started coming in as '1999-09-07 16:30:00.000'
I don't know what the previous format was.
select
case
when dbDate = '' then null
when dbDate != '^\d.*' then dbDate::timestamp
else '1900-01-01'::date + dbDate::int
end as dbDate
Whenever I call the function with the date it gives me
invalid input syntax for integer: "1999-09-07 16:30:00.000"
This nice function was taking multiple kinds of date inputs and normalizing them.
I assume it expected one of:
blank which it let be null
a date starting with 'MMM' in date format which would not pass '^\d.*' (i.e. something that doesn’t start with a number) which it would cast as a date
a number
The reason that the date was being casted as an INT is because after failing the first two tests the person writing this was expecting an INT. They wanted to add the integer to the beginning of Time (i.e. 1900-01-01) like Excel does.
1999-09-07 16:30:00.000 fails the second test even though it could be cast as time.
This passes through to the else, which fails to cast it as INT, and throws the error.
In this case, you need to change your second test. Make it something that will allow a datetime that you have coming in, but that would reject a number that should be added to 1900-01-01.
If you don’t think you will have numbers coming in that should be added to 1900-01-01, then just get rid of the third test and use
select
case
when dbDate = '' then null
else dbDate::timestamp
end as dbDate
I think I've read just about every thread on this topic and none of them are solving my problem.
First of all, the database I'm working with has all date fields set to a varchar data type, which drives me insane because I constantly have to cast or convert whenever I'm working with any queries involving dates.
The query I'm working with at the moment is supposed to pull a list of medical patients who all have a certain diagnosis, but that diagnosis has to have been given before a certain date. Here's what I've got.
SELECT DISTINCT
pd.PatientID,
pd.PatientName,
pmh.DateOfOnset
pmh.DiagnosisCode
FROM PatientDemographic pd JOIN PatientMedicalHistory pmh ON pd.PatientID = pmh.PatientID
WHERE pmh.DiagnosisCode = '401.1'
AND CAST(pmh.DateOfOnset as Date) > CAST('12/31/2014' as Date)
I'm getting an error that says "Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string." It's telling me the error is on Line 1 though (the SELECT DISTINCT line) so that's not really helpful and I'm not sure what I need to fix.
As I mentioned, the DateOfOnset field has a varchar data type, and I need to find any of those dates that came before the end of December, 2014. I've tried to remedy this error by trying different combinations of the CAST statements -- I even tried including a cast on the date field in the SELECT statement, and I'm still getting the same error.
I was working on another query earlier that required me to find all patient appointments from within a certain time frame, and for that query, I had my WHERE clause set up like:
WHERE Cast(VisitDate as Date) BETWEEN CAST('01/01/2014' as Date) AND CAST('12/01/2014' as Date)
...and it worked perfectly fine. Since I've got my current query set up virtually the same way, I'm not sure why I'm getting that conversion error.
You have wrong dateformat:
SET DATEFORMAT dmy;
SELECT CAST('12/31/2014' as Date);
--Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.
You could set it to mdy before executing your query.
SET DATEFORMAT mdy;
SELECT CAST('12/31/2014' as Date);
LiveDemo
or use CONVERT with style 101:
SET DATEFORMAT dmy;
SELECT CONVERT(DATE,'12/31/2014',101)
If you really need to store DATE as VARCHAR use at least culture independent type like ISO-8601.
SET DATEFORMAT dmy;
SELECT CAST('20140201' as Date);
-- 01.02.2014
SET DATEFORMAT mdy;
SELECT CAST('20140201' as Date)
-- 01.02.2014
It sounds like SQL is not able to convert the stored strings into dates. This would explain why CAST(pmh.DateOfOnset as Date) fails where Cast(VisitDate as Date) does not--the latter might not have any mis-formatted dates.
Best-case solution is to convert your table columns to the proper datatypes. Second-best case, add columns containing the proper datatypes, and convert the data over; you'd have to fix any existing bad data, as well as convert data on the fly as it's loaded (yuck). Another option, add a calculated column, though you'll have problems with the afore-mentioned invalid dates. (What version of SQL do you have? Later versions have the isdate function, which might help here.)
If modifying tables is not an option, you're probably stuck writing queries that have to assume some of the data is invalid (bad format).
I have a table and need to verify that a certain column contains only dates. I'm trying to count the number of records that are not follow a date format. If I check a field that I did not define as type "date" then the query works. However, when I check a field that I defined as a date it does not.
Query:
SELECT
count(case when ISDATE(Date_Field) = 0 then 1 end) as 'Date_Error'
FROM [table]
Column definition:
Date_Field(date, null)
Sample data: '2010-06-27'
Error Message:
Argument data type date is invalid for argument 1 of isdate function.
Any insight as to why this query is not working for fields I defined as dates?
Thanks!
If you defined the column with the Date type, it IS a Date. Period. This check is completely unnecessary.
What you may want to do is look for NULL values in the column:
SELECT SUM(case when Date_Field IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 end) as 'Date_Error' FROM [table]
I also sense an additional misunderstanding about how Date fields, including DateTime and DateTime2, work in Sql Server. The values in these fields are not stored as a string in any format at all. They are stored in a binary/numeric format, and only shown as a string as a convenience in your query tool. And that's a good thing. If you want the date in a particular format, use the CONVERT() function in your query, or even better, let your client application handle the formatting.
ISDATE() only evaluates against a STRING-like parameter (varchar, nvarachar, char,...)
To be sure, ISDATE()'s parameter should come wrapped in a cast() function.
i.e.
Select isdate(cast(parameter as nvarchar))
should return either 1 or 0, even if it's a MULL value.
Hope this helps.
IsDate takes a character string or exression that yeilds a character string as it's argument
The problem is this method ISDATE() only admits arguments of type datetime and smalldatetime within the "time" types, so it won´t work if you are using date type.
Also if you use date as type for that field, you won´t have to check the information there because it won´t admit other type of field.
You shoul only check for null values in your column, that´s all.
I have to run column checks for data consistency and the only thing that is throwing off my code is checking for character lengths for dates between certain parameters.
SEL
sum(case when ( A.date is null or (character_length(A.date) >8)) then 1 else 0 end ) as Date
from
table A
;
The date format of the column is YYYY-MM-DD, and the type is DA. When I run the script in SQL Assistant, I get an error 3580 "Illegal use of CHARACTERS, MCHARACTERS, or OCTET_LENGTH functions."
Preliminary research suggests that SQL Assistant has issues with the character_length function, but I don't know how to adjust the code to make it run.
with chareter length are you trying to get the memory used? Becuase if so that is constant for a date field. If you are trying to get the length of the string representation i think LENGTH(A.date) will suffice. Unfortanatly since teradata will pad zeros on conversions to string, I think this might always return 10.
UPDATE :
Okay so if you want a date in a special 'form' when you output it you need to select it properly. In teradata as with most DBs Date are not store in strings, but rather as ints, counting days from a given 'epoch' date for the database (for example the epoch might be 01/01/0000). Each date type in teradata has a format parameter, which places in the record header instructions on how to format the output on select. By default a date format is set to this DATE FROMAT 'MM/DD/YYYY' I believe. You can change that by casting.
Try SELECT cast(cast(A.date as DATE FORMAT 'MM-DD-YYYY') as CHAR(10)) FROM A. and see what happens. There should be no need to validate the form of the dates past a small sample to see if the format is correct. The second cast forces the database to perform the conversion and use the format header specified. Other wise what you might see is the database will pass the date in a date form to SQL Assitant and sql assitant will perform the conversion on the application level, using the format specified in its own setting rather then the one set in the database.