Sql-server – How to calculate exact month (in days) difference b/w two dates

sql serversql-server-2008

I am trying to get all the rows where the visit date was exact before five months from to date but somehow DateDiff function is including 26th Sept 2013 record which is not right as five month has average 150 to 153 days. I think it should count up to 3rd Sept 2013.

I am using DATEDIFF(MONTH, VisitDate , GETDATE()) > =5

Should i use DATEDIFF( DAY , VisitDate , GETDATE()) >= 153 instead

Best Answer

The problem with your problem (sorry, couldn't resist) is that you haven't properly defined what you expect a month to be. How many months are there between Dec 27 and Feb 28? How about Dec 28 and Feb 28? Dec 29? What about Dec 15 to Jan 13? Dec 15 to Jan 14?

As others have mentioned, DATEDIFF just measures the number of boundaries that have been passed. The following both return 1:

SELECT 
  DATEDIFF(YEAR,'20120101','20131231'), 
  DATEDIFF(YEAR,'20121231','20130101');

Even though you and I both know that only one day has passed in the first example, and almost two years have passed in the second.

If you want everything from before September 4th (since today is February 3rd), then:

DECLARE @d DATE = SYSDATETIME;

SELECT <cols> FROM dbo.tablename
  WHERE VisitDate < DATEADD(DAY, 1, DATEADD(MONTH, -5, @d));

-- the above evaluates to < '2013-09-04'

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Look at the order of the column indexes and ensure the most selective are first

SELECT
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FROM
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Then, read this around memory allocations for varchar columns in queries: SQL Server VARCHAR Column Width (follow Martim Smith's link)

Finally, you could use HASHBYTES to collapse the columns into a hashed computed column. You can add this to the index too as the first column so this is highly selective because it's almost unique A surrogate key may be useful

Sql-server – How to get the total days per month between two dates

Here's my attempt. Still think there are unanswered questions in your sample data, though.

DECLARE @s SMALLDATETIME, @e SMALLDATETIME;
SELECT  @s = '20120302',  @e = '20120605';

;WITH n(n) AS
(
  SELECT TOP (DATEDIFF(MONTH, @s, @e)+1) ROW_NUMBER() OVER 
  (ORDER BY [object_id])-1 FROM sys.all_objects
),
x(n,fd,ld) AS 
(
  SELECT n.n, DATEADD(MONTH, n.n, m.m), DATEADD(MONTH, n.n+1, m.m)
  FROM n, (SELECT DATEADD(DAY, 1-DAY(@s), @s)) AS m(m)
)
SELECT [Month] = DATENAME(MONTH, fd), [Days] = DATEDIFF(DAY, fd, ld) 
  - CASE WHEN @s > fd THEN (DATEDIFF(DAY, fd, @s)+1) ELSE 0 END
  - CASE WHEN @e < ld THEN (DATEDIFF(DAY, @e, ld)-1) ELSE 0 END
  FROM x;

Results:

Month  Days
-----  ----
March    29
April    30
May      31
June      5

Best Answer

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