在T-SQL中减去两个日期

Question

I was going through a script written by a predecessor.

Can someone explain to me why would this statement

--- CreatedDateTime is a datetime column in SALES_ORDER table.
SELECT * FROM SALES_ORDER
WHERE GETDATE() - CreatedDateTime < 1

returns the same result as

SELECT * FROM SALES_ORDER 
WHERE DateDiff(hh,CreatedDateTime, GetDate()) < 24

Answer 1

Subtraction of a number from a DATETIME is documented here : "Can also subtract a number, in days, from a date."

declare @Now as DateTime = GetDate();
declare @OneWeekAgo as SQL_Variant = @Now - 7;

select @Now as [Now], @OneWeekAgo as [Delta], SQL_Variant_Property( @OneWeekAgo, 'BaseType' ) as [Data Type];

Under Using Operators with Date and Time Data Types : "To add and subtract for all date and time data types, use DATEADD and DATEDIFF."

In a possible violation of the Principle of Least Astonishment we see the following curious result:

declare @Now as DateTime = GetDate();
declare @Then as DateTime = '17760704';
declare @Delta as SQL_Variant = @Now - @Then;

select @Now as [Now], @Then as [Then], @Delta as [Delta],
  SQL_Variant_Property( @Delta, 'BaseType' ) as [Data Type],
  Cast( @Delta as Int ) as [Days];

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Answer 2

Both boolean expressions evaluate to the same thing. Either it's 24 hours old or 1 day old. Incidentally both of them exclude the usage of an index on the CreatedDateTime column. If you have an index on this column and would like to increase the likelihood of it being used then you would write it more like this:

    SELECT * FROM SALES_ORDER
    WHERE CreatedDateTime > GETDATE() - 1

or this (less than one day old):

    SELECT * FROM SALES_ORDER
    WHERE CreatedDateTime > DateAdd(dd,-1,GetDate())

or this (less than 86400000 milliseconds old old):

    SELECT * FROM SALES_ORDER
    WHERE CreatedDateTime > DateAdd(ms,-86400000,GetDate())