Comparing dates in search conditions

You can use operators other than equals to select a set of rows that satisfy the search condition. The inequality operators (< and >) can be used to compare numbers, dates, and even character strings.

List all employees born before March 13, 1964

  • In Interactive SQL, execute the following query:

    SELECT Surname, BirthDate
   FROM Employees
   WHERE BirthDate < 'March 13, 1964'
   ORDER BY BirthDate DESC;

    Surname

    		 BirthDate
    Ahmed 1963-12-12
    Dill 1963-07-19
    Rebeiro 1963-04-12
    Garcia 1963-01-23
    Pastor 1962-07-14
    ... ...
Notes

  • Automatic conversion to dates   The SQL Anywhere database server knows that the BirthDate column contains dates, and automatically converts the string 'March 13, 1964' to a date.

  • Ways of specifying dates   There are many ways of specifying dates. For example: 
    'March 13, 1964'
'1964/03/13'
'1964-03-13'

    You can configure the interpretation of dates in queries by setting the date_order option database option. See date_order option [compatibility].

    Dates in the format yyyy/mm/dd or yyyy-mm-dd are always recognized unambiguously as dates, regardless of the date_order setting.

  • Other comparison operators   SQL Anywhere supports several comparison operators. See Comparison operators.

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