Crystal Syntax "Like" Statment on date searches.

Question

Post Author: smilbuta
CA Forum: Data Connectivity and SQL
Hello,
I am currently developing an application using VS2005 and Crystal Reports.
I wish to pass a Crystal Syntax statement to the report that searches for like dates in a date column in a SQL 2005 Database..
The statments as follows.
crystalsyntax = "{EQ_Equipment.equipment_warranty} like '2009'"
I get returned an error saying string expected??
so i tested diferent formats, and if i use this string i get only one record returned out of a known test group of 10 records.
"{EQ_Equipment.equipment_warranty} Like DateValue('2009')"
so im unsure what im doing wrong. Any advice would be apreciated.

Answer 1

Post Author: Jagan
CA Forum: Data Connectivity and SQL
LIKE is used to compare strings. You're trying to compare a date with a string. That's why it says "string expected".
I'm not sure what the result of DateValue('2009') is, but it's pretty certain that what you've then got is a date (warrenty) being 'liked' with a date, so both are being implicitely converted to strings first.
What you could do is explicitely convert the warrenty date to a string in a format of your choice (don't rely on the implicit format) and then LIKE that with '2009'.
Or change your statement to Year() = 2009  but this might result in Crystal doing the hard work instead of the database.
Best would be to test that the warrenty date is in the year range, so that you can still use any index that might exist on the warrenty date column. See the help on 'in range operator'. e.g.  in DateValue(<year>, 01, 01) to DateValue(<year>, 12, 31)