DATE literal

Syntax

DATE '<YYYY-MM-DD>'

DATE '2026-06-15'

Description

A DATE literal is a calendar day with no time-of-day — just year, month, and day, like a birthday or a due date. Write it as the keyword DATE followed by an ISO-8601 date in quotes. Use it to filter or compute against date columns.

Technical Description

DATE '…' parses an ISO-8601 calendar date (YYYY-MM-DD) into a zone-less civil java.time.LocalDate at parse time; a malformed payload is a positioned parse error. It infers as the DATE scalar type. DATE literals push down to SQL (per dialect), except to SQLite, which has no date type. Single- or double-quoted payloads are both accepted.

Examples

Filter rows on or after a date:

σ due_date >= DATE '2026-01-01' (Invoices)

σ due_date ≥ DATE '2026-01-01' (Invoices)

SELECT due_date >= DATE '2026-01-01' (Invoices)

Date arithmetic — days until due (DATE − DATE → DURATION):

π id, (due_date - DATE '2026-06-15') → remaining (Invoices)

PROJECT id, (due_date - DATE '2026-06-15') -> remaining (Invoices)

A computed deadline column:

π id, DATE '2026-12-31' → year_end (Projects)

PROJECT id, DATE '2026-12-31' -> year_end (Projects)

Limitations

A DATE has no time component (use TIMESTAMP for date+time). Comparisons must be against another DATE (same-type only). The payload must be valid ISO-8601.

Alternatives

TIMESTAMP for an instant with time-of-day; TIME for a clock time only; to_date(str) to parse a date from a string column.

See Also

timestamp-literal, time-literal, duration-literal, to_date, year, month, day

Notes

DATE − DATE yields a DURATION; DATE ± DURATION yields a TIMESTAMP.