ASA Getting Started
  Selecting Data from Database Tables
    Selecting rows from a table

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, type the following in the SQL Statements pane:

  SELECT emp_lname, birth_date
  FROM employee
  WHERE birth_date < 'March 13, 1964'
  ORDER BY birth_date DESC

  emp_lname	birth_date
  Ahmed	12/12/1963
  Dill	7/19/1963
  Rebeiro	4/12/1963
  Garcia	1/23/1963
  Pastor	7/14/1962
  ...	...

Notes 

• Automatic conversion to dates    The Adaptive Server Anywhere database server knows that the birth_date 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. The following are all accepted by Adaptive Server Anywhere:

  'March 13, 1964'
  '1964/03/13'
  '1964-03-13'

  You can tune the interpretation of dates in queries by setting a database option. Dates in the format yyyy/mm/dd or yyyy-mm-dd are always recognized unambiguously as dates, regardless of the DATE_ORDER setting.

  For information on controlling allowable date formats in queries, see DATE_ORDER option [compatibility], and Setting options.

• Other comparison operators    For a complete list of available comparison operators, see Comparison operators.