Can I declare a year somehow in SQL Server 2008?

I want to delclare a year such as :

DECLARE @Year varchar

and populate this with something such as :

select @Year = year('2011')

Can I do this or must I create an entire DATE and populate it with filler information?

I wish to have a reuseable year vairable rthat I can inject into my queries.

Thanks in adva开发者_如何学Pythonnce for your help and suggestions.

I performed this google search and also this google search

I think I may be on to a solution but, if there is a quick way please let me know. I will update if I figure it out.

I believe I need to add some additional information for clarification.

I need this variable in order to perform some date comparisons on dates that are in my database. I want to check to verify that the variable @Year is equal to the year of the date in the database.

YEAR(EntryDate) = YEAR('2011')

or

my new method

YEAR(EntryDate) = YEAR(cast(@year as varchar))

This is a part of my where statement in my query.

1 - Why make it a varchar instead of an int? You want 2011 not Two thousand and eleven right?

2 - You can always use the YEAR(GETDATE()) function to get the current year.

Syntax for a numerical value would be

DECLARE @Year int = YEAR(GETDATE())

EDIT:

Example of why it is bad to use varchar for a number comparison:

With int:

21 < 2010 = TRUE

With varchar:

21 < 2010 = FALSE