Here we see a Seek Predicate that looks for OrderDate values between two values that have been worked out elsewhere in the plan, but creating a range in which the right values must exist. This isn’t >= 20110805 00:00 and < 20110806 00:00 (which is what I would’ve made it), it’s something else. The value for start of this range must be smaller than 20110805 00:00, because it’s >, not >=. All we can really say is that when someone within Microsoft implemented how the QO should respond to this kind of predicate, they gave it enough information to come up with what I call a “helper predicate.”
Now, I would love Microsoft to make more functions sargable, but that particular request was Closed long before they retired Connect.
But maybe what I mean is for them to make more helper predicates.
The problem with helper predicates is that they almost certainly read more rows than you want. But it’s still way better than looking through the whole index.
Read the whole thing.