SQL “between” not inclusive

Question

I have a query like this:

SELECT * FROM Cases WHERE created_at BETWEEN \'2013-05-01\' AND \'2013-05-01\'

But this gives no results even tho

Answer 1

It has been assumed that the second date reference in the BETWEEN syntax is magically considered to be the "end of the day" but this is untrue.

i.e. this was expected:

SELECT * FROM Cases 
WHERE created_at BETWEEN the beginning of '2013-05-01' AND the end of '2013-05-01'

but what really happen is this:

SELECT * FROM Cases 
WHERE created_at BETWEEN '2013-05-01 00:00:00+00000' AND '2013-05-01 00:00:00+00000'

Which becomes the equivalent of:

SELECT * FROM Cases WHERE created_at = '2013-05-01 00:00:00+00000'

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The problem is one of perceptions/expectations about BETWEEN which does include BOTH the lower value and the upper values in the range, but does not magically make a date the "beginning of" or "the end of".

BETWEEN should be avoided when filtering by date ranges.

Always use the >= AND < instead

SELECT * FROM Cases 
WHERE (created_at >= '20130501' AND created_at < '20130502')

the parentheses are optional here but can be important in more complex queries.