Why use the BETWEEN operator when we can do without it?

Question

As seen below the two queries, we find that they both work well. Then I am confused why should we ever use BETWEEN because I have found that BETWEEN behaves differently in different databases as found in w3school

SELECT *
FROM employees
WHERE salary BETWEEN 5000 AND 15000;

SELECT *
FROM employees
WHERE salary >= 5000
AND salary <= 15000;

Answer 1

BETWEEN can help to avoid unnecessary reevaluation of the expression:

SELECT  AVG(RAND(20091225) BETWEEN 0.2 AND 0.4)
FROM    t_source;

---
0.1998

SELECT  AVG(RAND(20091225) >= 0.2 AND RAND(20091225) <= 0.4)
FROM    t_source;

---
0.3199

t_source is just a dummy table with 1,000,000 records.

Of course this can be worked around using a subquery, but in MySQL it's less efficient.

And of course, BETWEEN is more readable. It takes 3 times to use it in a query to remember the syntax forever.

In SQL Server and MySQL, LIKE against a constant with non-leading '%' is also a shorthand for a pair of >= and <:

SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON
GO
SELECT  *
FROM    master
WHERE   name LIKE 'string%'
GO
SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT OFF
GO


|--Index Seek(OBJECT:([test].[dbo].[master].[ix_name_desc]), SEEK:([test].[dbo].[master].[name] < 'strinH' AND [test].[dbo].[master].[name] >= 'string'),  WHERE:([test].[dbo].[master].[name] like 'string%') ORDERED FORWARD)

However, LIKE syntax is more legible.