java.util.Date equals() doesn't seem to work as expected

Question

Problem

I have a Map, and a list of objects from the database with an effectiveDate property, and I want to check to see

Answer 1

A Date object returned from a database would probably be a java.sql.Timestamp, which cannot be equal to a java.util.Date object. I'd just take the long returned from getTime(), and use that as a key in your HashMap.