Good article, but I disagree with the DATEDIFF/DATEADD statement "The first query can't possibly use an index and performs the DATEDIFF on every row in the table." used on the DateOfBirth example.

I believe this is because of the "select *", and not because of the DateDiff/DateAdd differences. (Also as a side note, both return a different amount of rows in my testing so I'd say they are not interchangeable). If you reduce the number of fields needed (maybe down to just CustomerID ) and they are also in an index ( DateOfBirth, CustomerID ), then that index can be used in both types of queries.