I want to use Like operator in a column of datetime. The values of the column is as follows:
2013-08-31 17:54:52.000
2013-08-31 17:54:52.000
My query is as below:
SELECT * FROM table where created_date Like '%54%'
It works fine. but when I search for '%52%' instead of '%54%', it gives me nothing. (It is working when I search till the minutes, but when I search for seconds or milli seconds it does not work.)
I have looked at the following url and it is working
SQL LIKE Statement on a DateTime Type
I want to know the reason, why this is happening and how like operator works with datetime type column.
I think it would be a better idea to use the DATEPART operator of SQL SERVER to extract the portion of date.
And example could be like:-
SELECT * FROM table
where DATEPART(minute,created_date)=54
EDIT:-
I want to know the reason, why this is happening and how like operator
works with datetime type column.
Actually there is no direct support given by SQL Server for LIKE operator for DATETIME variable but you can always cast the DATETIME to a VARCHAR and then try to use the LIKE operator as you want.
On a side note:-
MSDN says:-
DATEPART can be used in the select list, WHERE, HAVING, GROUP BY and
ORDER BY clauses.
In SQL Server 2012, DATEPART implicitly casts string literals as a
datetime2 type. This means that DATEPART does not support the format
YDM when the date is passed as a string. You must explicitly cast the
string to a datetime or smalldatetime type to use the YDM format.
The 'LIKE' operator and any regular expression operators provided by other databases are used to process text values. A date is definitely not a text value, it is a separata type by itself.
It makes little sense to apply a text operator to a non-text type (like int or DATETIME or DATETIMEOFFSET), which is why you can't use LIKE on dates in any database. First of all, the values are not stored as text but in an implementation-specific binary form.
Then, while you can use LIKE on a specific text representation of a date, eg using CAST you have to absolutely certain what that representation is. Different locales display dates differently, with year first, year last, month first or last or whatever. What would you search against?
Moreover, what is 54? 54 minutes, 54 seconds or 654 milliseconds?
The only sensible solution is to use DATEPART to check specific parts of a date, or the BETWEEN operator to check for ranges.
Related
I have a question regarding SQL dates.
The table I am working with has a date field in the following format: "22-SEP-08". The field is a date column.
I am trying to figure out how to output records from 1/1/2000 to present day.
The code below is not filtering the date field:
Select distinct entity.lt_date
from feed.entitytable entity
where entity.lt_date >= '2000-01-01'
Any help regarding this issue is much appreciated. Thanks!
Edit: I am using Oracle SQL Developer to write my code.
DATEs do not have "a format". Any format you see is applied by the application displaying the date value.
You can either change the configuration of SQL Developer to display dates in a different format, or you can use to_char() to format the date the way you want.
The reason your statement does not work, is most probably because of the implicit data type conversion that you are relying on.
'2000-01-01' is a string value, not a date. And the string is converted using the NLS settings of your session. Given the fact that you see dates displayed as DD-MON-YY means that that is the format that is used by the evil implicit data type conversion. You should supply date values always as real date literals.
There are two ways of specifying a real date literal. The first is ANSI SQL and simple uses the keyword DATE in front of an ISO formatted string:
where entity.lt_date >= DATE '2000-01-01'
Note the DATE keyword in front of the string, wich makes it a real date literal not a string expression.
The other option is to use to_date() to convert a character value into a date:
where entity.lt_date >= to_date('2000-01-01', 'yyyy-mm-dd');
More details about specifying date literals can be found in the manual:
Date literals
to_date function
My guess is the data type isn't a Date. Just in case its a char type, try to convert it using the Oracle TO_DATE() function. The Oracle documentation below should help you with parameters.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/functions183.htm
An implicit datatype conversion bites once again.
You're right. The predicate is not doing the comparison you are expecting,
Oracle is performing an implicit datatype conversion, from DATE to VARCHAR, so that it can do a comparison to the string literal.
If lt_date column is DATE datatype, then Oracle is seeing your where clause:
where entity.lt_date >= '2000-01-01'
Oracle is actually seeing it as if it's written like this:
where TO_CHAR(entity.lt_date) >= '2000-01-01'
And that's where the "format" problem comes in. The column itself does not have a "format". Because the second argument to the TO_CHAR function is not supplied, Oracle is using the value of the NLS_DATE_FORMAT parameter (from your session). And that's probably set to DD-MON-YY. Which is why that's the "format" you're seeing when you a run a SELECT statement in SQL*Plus. Because the DATE value is (again) being run through a TO_CHAR function to get a string that can be displayed.
To get the "filtering" you want, don't do a comparison to a string literal. Instead, do the comparison to an expression that has DATE datatype.
You can use the Oracle TO_DATE function. And you don't want to rely on setting of NLS_DATE_FORMAT, explicitly specify the format model as the second argument to the function. For example:
DO THIS
where entity.lt_date >= TO_DATE('2000-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD')
DON'T DO THIS
It's also possible to specify the format model as the second argument to the TO_CHAR function.
where TO_CHAR(entity.lt_date,'YYYY-MM-DD') >= '2001-01-01'
But you don't want to do that because that's going to force Oracle to evaluate that expression on the left side for every flipping row in the table, so it has a string value to do the comparison. (That's true unless someone created a function-based index for you.) If you do the comparison on the bare column, using the TO_DATE on the literal side, Oracle can make effective use of an appropriate index (with lt_date as the leading column) to satisfy the predicate.
I am confused with to_date(char[,'format'[,nls_lang]) function. Lets suppose I have to_date('31-DEC-1982','DD-MON-YYYY');should the format specified in the function be same as the date string? The above function works fine. When I use to_date('31-DEC-1982','DD-MM-YYYY'); also works fine but the month field in date string and that in format does not match.
So my doubt is should the date string and format specified match exactly to convert it to Date object.
Thanks
Generally speaking, yes, the date string and specified format should match. But the reason why it works in your case is that Oracle, for certain cases, provides flexibility of alternative format matching.
Excerpt from official Oracle Site
If a match fails between a datetime format element and the corresponding characters in the date string, then Oracle attempts alternative format elements
So as per above table, you can use 'MON' or 'MONTH' in place of 'MM'.
Similarly you can use 'YYYY' in place 'YY', etc
Reference:
Oracle Format Matching
Whatever format you follow, the object returned will be of date type.
You can test this via creating a dummy table and showing the table description.
e.g. CREATE TABLE TEST AS(
select to_date('31-DEC-1982','DD-MON-YYYY') dd from dual);
Now desc test;
Result will be dd date.
Similar will be the result with another type.
However if you are using SQL Developer, the date will be show in the exact NLS format as the setting there applies.
tools->preferences->database->NLS
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'm new to MS Access..
one of my Access table CHECKOUT having a column name CHECK-TIME with Date/time data type
values in that column are like 7/15/2013 10:56:22 AM,9/19/2013 6:54:37 PM....
i want to select the data based on date like `7/15/2013'
how to write the query for this task ???
thanks in advance..
First off, the way to specify date literals is with hash (#) not any form of quote or backtick.
Secondly, you can't do LIKE comparisons with dates, not that I've ever seen anyway.
Thirdly, it's always best to specify dates in yyyy-mm-dd format because it's an unambiguous format.
This example should give you what you need:
SELECT
*
FROM
CHECKOUT
WHERE
datevalue([CHECK-TIME]) = #2013-07-15#
The datevalue() function takes a parameter, usually a string but in this case a datetime, and converts it to a date, thus stripping off the time. This allows us to check for equality against a date literal.
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.