Question: I have a table in SQL Server 2005 which has three columns: 

```
id (int), 
message (text), 
timestamp (datetime)

```

There is an index on timestamp and id.

I am interested in doing a query which retrieves all messages for a given date, say '12/20/2008'. However I know that simply doing where timestamp='12/20/2008' won't give me the correct result because the field is a datetime field. 

Somebody had recommended using the DATEPART function and pulling the year, month, and day out of timestamp and verifying that these are equal to 2008, 12, and 20, respectively. It looks like this would not use the index I have on timestamp and would end up doing a full table scan.

So what is the best way to construct my query so that I am taking advantage of the index that I have created?

Answer: 
```
-- avoid re-calculating @MyDate +1 for every row
DECLARE @NextDay DateTime
Set @NextDay = @MyDate + 1

SELECT 
    -- ...
WHERE [timestamp] >= @MyDate AND [timestamp] < @NextDay

```
The BETWEEN statement can help you. 

```
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE TimeStamp BETWEEN @Start AND @End;

```

Start would need to be something like 12:01 am for the day you want messages for, and end would be like 11:59pm for the end of the same day.