For instance can
SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE foo BETWEEN 5 AND 10 select 5 and 10 or they are excluded from the range?
8 Answers
The BETWEEN operator is inclusive.
From Books Online:
BETWEEN returns TRUE if the value of test_expression is greater than or equal to the value of begin_expression and less than or equal to the value of end_expression.
DateTime Caveat
NB: With DateTimes you have to be careful; if only a date is given the value is taken as of midnight on that day; to avoid missing times within your end date, or repeating the capture of the following day's data at midnight in multiple ranges, your end date should be 3 milliseconds before midnight on of day following your to date. 3 milliseconds because any less than this and the value will be rounded up to midnight the next day.
e.g. to get all values within June 2016 you'd need to run:
where myDateTime between '20160601' and DATEADD(millisecond, -3, '20160701')
i.e.
where myDateTime between '20160601 00:00:00.000' and '20160630 23:59:59.997'
datetime2 and datetimeoffset
Subtracting 3 ms from a date will leave you vulnerable to missing rows from the 3 ms window. The correct solution is also the simplest one:
where myDateTime >= '20160601' AND myDateTime < '20160701' 
4 Comments
Pete
When using BETWEEN to filter DateTimes between two dates, you can also cast the DateTime to a Date, eg: where CONVERT(DATE, MyDate) BETWEEN '2017-09-01' and '2017-09-30' This approach makes the time element of the DateTime irrelevant
Ian Boyd
Be sure not to try to subtract 3 ms from a date; you'll miss items from those 3 ms. And you also don't want to
CONVERT a datetime to a date, as that will render indexes useless. Use the standard WHERE OrderDate >= '20160601' AND OrderDate < '20160701'. Also, be sure to use yyyymmdd, as yyyy-mm-dd is locale dependent, and will be misinterpreted depending on your server's mdy, dmy, ymd, ydm, myd, and dym setting.
Robert McKee
@IanBoyd I thought yyyy-mm-dd was universal, and that no culture uses yyyy-dd-mm as a date format. I think one uses yyyy.dd.mm, but even if you set your culture to that, it will still interpret yyyy-mm-dd correctly. Do you have an example culture that I could test with?
Ian Boyd
dz-BT uses yyyy-mm-dd. As does en-CA, fr-CA, xh-ZA, rw-RW, ko-KR, lt-LT, smj-SE, se-NO, se-SE, sma-SE, st-ZA, nso-ZA, tn-BW, tn-ZA, si-LK, sv-SE, ug-CN, ve-ZA, ts-ZA.Yes, but be careful when using between for dates.
BETWEEN '20090101' AND '20090131' is really interpreted as 12am, or
BETWEEN '20090101 00:00:00' AND '20090131 00:00:00' so will miss anything that occurred during the day of Jan 31st. In this case, you will have to use:
myDate >= '20090101 00:00:00' AND myDate < '20090201 00:00:00' --CORRECT! or
BETWEEN '20090101 00:00:00' AND '20090131 23:59:59' --WRONG! (see update!) UPDATE: It is entirely possible to have records created within that last second of the day, with a datetime as late as 20090101 23:59:59.997!!
For this reason, the BETWEEN (firstday) AND (lastday 23:59:59) approach is not recommended.
Use the myDate >= (firstday) AND myDate < (Lastday+1) approach instead.
8 Comments
Martin Smith
Similar issues with strings as well
WHERE col BETWEEN 'a' AND 'z' will exclude most of the z rows for example.
Andrzej Doyle
This point is right of course; but ought not to be surprising if you're working with datetimes. It's analogous to pointing out that
BETWEEN 5 AND 10 doesn't include 10.2...
craig
CASTing the datetime as a DATE would work: CAST(DATE_TIME_COL AS DATE) BETWEEN '01/01/2009' AND '01/31/2009'.
BradC
@craig, that's true, as long as you are using SQL 2008 or higher, which is when the Date datatype was introduced. Also, that syntax will convert that value for every single row, so won't be able to use any indexes on that field (if that is a concern).
wal
It is entirely possible to have records created within that last second of the day, with a datetime as late as 01/01/2009 23:59:59.997 <-- couldnt you just then use AND '01/31/2009 23:59:59.99999999' or however many 9's are required |
Real world example from SQL Server 2008.
Source data:
ID Start 1 2010-04-30 00:00:01.000 2 2010-04-02 00:00:00.000 3 2010-05-01 00:00:00.000 4 2010-07-31 00:00:00.000 Query:
SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE Start BETWEEN '2010-04-01 00:00:00' AND '2010-05-01 00:00:00' Results:
ID Start 1 2010-04-30 00:00:01.000 2 2010-04-02 00:00:00.000 
3 Comments
anar khalilov
I didn't get your answer, to be honest. Maybe my internet provider has hidden your screenshot if you posted one.
Dai
Why is the row with
ID = 3 excluded? Its Start value is equal to the BETWEEN upper-bound value, and BETWEEN is an inclusive range, not an exclusive upper-bounded range.
Samir
Better answer with results.
if you hit this, and don't really want to try and handle adding a day in code, then let the DB do it..
myDate >= '20090101 00:00:00' AND myDate < DATEADD(day,1,'20090101 00:00:00') If you do include the time portion: make sure it references midnight. Otherwise you can simply omit the time:
myDate >= '20090101' AND myDate < DATEADD(day,1,'20090101') and not worry about it.
Comments
BETWEEN (Transact-SQL)
Specifies a(n) (inclusive) range to test.
test_expression [ NOT ] BETWEEN begin_expression AND end_expression Arguments
test_expressionIs the expression to test for in the range defined by begin_expression and end_expression. test_expression must be the same data type as both begin_expression and end_expression.
NOTSpecifies that the result of the predicate be negated.
begin_expressionIs any valid expression. begin_expression must be the same data type as both test_expression and end_expression.
end_expressionIs any valid expression. end_expression must be the same data type as both test_expression and begin_expression.
ANDActs as a placeholder that indicates test_expression should be within the range indicated by begin_expression and end_expression.
Remarks
To specify an exclusive range, use the greater than (>) and less than operators (<). If any input to the BETWEEN or NOT BETWEEN predicate is NULL, the result is UNKNOWN.
Result Value
BETWEEN returns TRUE if the value of test_expression is greater than or equal to the value of begin_expression and less than or equal to the value of end_expression.
NOT BETWEEN returns TRUE if the value of test_expression is less than the value of begin_expression or greater than the value of end_expression.
Comments
If the column data type is datetime then you can do this following to eliminate time from datetime and compare between date range only.
where cast(getdate() as date) between cast(loginTime as date) and cast(logoutTime as date) 
1 Comment
Arno Peters
This works better than adding +1 to the end date. I agree with Andrew Morton - if it is not sargable it may improve performance to change column data type or add a second column with pre-computed dates only.
It does includes boundaries.
declare @startDate date = cast('15-NOV-2016' as date) declare @endDate date = cast('30-NOV-2016' as date) create table #test (c1 date) insert into #test values(cast('15-NOV-2016' as date)) insert into #test values(cast('20-NOV-2016' as date)) insert into #test values(cast('30-NOV-2016' as date)) select * from #test where c1 between @startDate and @endDate drop table #test RESULT c1 2016-11-15 2016-11-20 2016-11-30 declare @r1 int = 10 declare @r2 int = 15 create table #test1 (c1 int) insert into #test1 values(10) insert into #test1 values(15) insert into #test1 values(11) select * from #test1 where c1 between @r1 and @r2 drop table #test1 RESULT c1 10 11 15 
Comments
I've always used this:
WHERE myDate BETWEEN startDate AND (endDate+1)
<>>=<=appropriately