> It's *standard* not to quote date literals? How are

these "standard"

> databases going to distinguish your expression from an illegal

calculation

> expression?
>
> ./hb

SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and others supports this.

I'm sure that they are evaluating what you are comparing "from" and
internally cast/promote what you are comparing "to".

So...
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myDateField > 1/1/2004 works in the above
databases plus a few more that I know of WITHOUT needing to place
qoutes around them.