Well it can actually depend on yuor version of SQL and some settings I forget. If you store as a string and compare to a string SQL in most cases will compare as string, if comparing to a date SQL may convert to a compatible date format (it is a real value with whole number being days and decimal being time) or the other value may be converted to a compatible string which because yyyymmdd sorts alphabetically properly will not be an issue anyway. If you want to be sure how it is handled use CAST(dateval AS smalldatetime) to control explicitly. My personal opinion is always be explicit because some implicit conversions have changed between versions and code that behaved one way in 7 may not behave the same in 2000.