Hardcoded date literals in SOQL queries create several maintenance and flexibility problems.
When you write dates directly in your queries like 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z, you’re creating code that only works for that specific time
period. This approach has significant drawbacks:
Inflexibility: The query can only retrieve data for the exact dates you specified. If you need to query different time periods,
you must modify the code each time.
Maintenance burden: Every time you want to analyze data for a different month, quarter, or year, you need to update the hardcoded
values and redeploy your code.
Testing challenges: It becomes difficult to test your code with different date ranges or to create comprehensive test scenarios
that cover various time periods.
Business logic coupling: Your data access logic becomes tightly coupled to specific dates, making it harder to reuse the same
query logic for different business scenarios.
SOQL provides powerful mechanisms like bind variables and built-in date functions that make queries dynamic and adaptable. Using these features
keeps your code flexible and maintainable.
What is the potential impact?
Hardcoded date literals make code inflexible and increase maintenance overhead. Every time you need to query different time periods, you must
modify and redeploy the code. This approach also makes testing more difficult and couples your queries to specific dates rather than business
logic.
