What is the suggested date format to use in SQL Server?

I’ve seen a few variations of writing dates in SQL Server as it doesn’t support the more standard literal format of:

DATE '2014-01-01'

Is there a suggested way to write date-literals (or the closest thing to it) in SQL Server? Currently what I do is:

CAST('2014-01-01' AS date)

Whenever I want to use a date. Is this the most common?

>Solution :

SQL Server supports some date formats, but you can use ‘20220101’

CREATE TABLE t1([date]  date)

INSERT INTO t1 values ('20220101')

SELECT * FROM t1

| date       |
| :--------- |
| 2022-01-01 |

db<>fiddle here

You are missunderstanding sql for TSQL

In your SELECT date, '20220101' FROM t1the second is a string for sql

But as you see in the query below, TSQL will convert the text i8no a date automatically when comparing for example

SELECT CASE WHEN CAST('2014-01-01' AS date) > '20220101' THEN 'TRUE' ELSe 'FaLSE' END 

| (No column name) |
| :--------------- |
| FaLSE            |

db<>fiddle here