How can I generate a temporary table filled with dates in SQL Server 2000?

Question

I need to make a temporary table that holds of range of dates, as well as a couple of columns that hold placeholder values (0) for future use. The dates I need are the firs

Answer 1

This of course will not work in SQL-Server 2000 but in a modern database where you don't want to create a permanent table. You can use a table variable instead creating a table so you can left join the data try this. Change the DAY to HOUR etc to change the increment type.

declare @CalendarMonths table (date DATETIME,  PRIMARY KEY (date)
)

DECLARE
  @basedate DATETIME,
  @offset   INT
SELECT
  @basedate = '01 Jan 2014',
  @offset = 1
  INSERT INTO @CalendarMonths SELECT @basedate

WHILE ( DATEADD(DAY, @offset, @basedate) < CURRENT_TIMESTAMP)
BEGIN
  INSERT INTO @CalendarMonths SELECT DATEADD(HOUR, @offset, date) FROM @CalendarMonths where DATEADD(DAY, @offset, date) < CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
  SELECT @offset = @offset + @offset
END

Answer 2

I would probably use a Calendar table. Create a permanent table in your database and fill it with all of the dates. Even if you covered a 100 year range, the table would still only have ~36,525 rows in it.

CREATE TABLE dbo.Calendar (
    calendar_date    DATETIME    NOT NULL,
    is_weekend       BIT         NOT NULL,
    is_holiday       BIT         NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT PK_Calendar PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (calendar_date)
)

Once the table is created, just populate it once in a loop, so that it's always out there and available to you.

Your query then could be something like this:

SELECT
    C.calendar_date,
    0 AS trials,
    0 AS sales
FROM
    dbo.Calendar C
WHERE
    C.calendar_date BETWEEN @start_date AND @end_date AND
    DAY(C.calendar_date) = 1

You can join in the Customers table however you need to, outer joining on FirstOfMonth(InsertDate) = C.calendar_date if that's what you want.

You can also include a column for day_of_month if you want which would avoid the overhead of calling the DAY() function, but that's fairly trivial, so it probably doesn't matter one way or another.

Answer 3

A starting point of a useful kludge to specify a range or specific list of dates:

SELECT *
FROM 
    (SELECT CONVERT(DateTime,'2017-1-1')+number AS [Date]
     FROM master..spt_values WHERE type='P' AND number<370) AS DatesList
WHERE DatesList.Date IN ('2017-1-1','2017-4-14','2017-4-17','2017-12-25','2017-12-26')

You can get 0 to 2047 out of master..spt_values WHERE type='P', so that's five and a half year's worth of dates if you need it!

Answer 4

declare @start datetime
set @start = '2016-09-01'
declare @end datetime
set @end = '2016-09-30'

create table #Date
(
    table_id int identity(1,1) NOT NULL,
    counterDate datetime NULL
);

insert into #Date select top (datediff(D,@start,@end)) NULL from SOME_TABLE
update #Date set counterDate = dateadd(D,table_id - 1, @start)

The code above should populate the table with all the dates between the start and end. You would then just join on this table to get all of the dates needed. If you only needed a certain day of each month, you could dateadd a month instead.

Answer 5

select top (datediff(D,@start,@end)) dateadd(D,id-1,@start)
from BIG_TABLE_WITH_NO_JUMPS_IN_ID

Answer 6

For SQL Server 2000, this stackoverflow post looks promising for a way to temporarily generate dates calculated off of a start and end date. It's not exactly the same but quite similar. This post has a very in-depth answer on truncating dates, if needed.

In case anyone stumbles on this question and is working in PostgreSQL instead of SQL Server 2000, here is how you might do it there...

PostgreSQL has a nifty series generating function. For your example, you could use this series of all days instead of generating an entire calendar table, and then do groupings and matchups from there.

SELECT current_date + s.a AS dates FROM generate_series(0,14,7) AS s(a);
   dates
------------
 2004-02-05
 2004-02-12
 2004-02-19
(3 rows)

SELECT * FROM generate_series('2008-03-01 00:00'::timestamp,
                              '2008-03-04 12:00', '10 hours');
   generate_series   
---------------------
 2008-03-01 00:00:00
 2008-03-01 10:00:00
 2008-03-01 20:00:00
 2008-03-02 06:00:00
 2008-03-02 16:00:00
 2008-03-03 02:00:00
 2008-03-03 12:00:00
 2008-03-03 22:00:00
 2008-03-04 08:00:00
(9 rows)

I would also look into date_trunc from PostgreSQL using 'month' for the truncator field to maybe refactor your original query to easily match with a date_trunc version of the calendar series.