The final word on storage for DATETIME2
Two years ago I wrote a post that got a lot of traction in the comments at the time. Last month there was renewed interest because one of the commenters noted that the official SQL…
How SQL Server stores data types: dates and times
This post dives into how SQL Server stores date and time data types in memory and on disk. But first, a note about endianness: CPUs manufactured by Intel and other vendors process binary values in…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATEADD()
We are now in the home stretch of the long-running series about dates and times in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. This week we look at one of my favourite T-SQL functions when it…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: AT TIME ZONE
Continuing the series on dates and times in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, this week we look at the hint AT TIME ZONE. In Azure SQL Database, the regional settings of the database are…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATENAME()
Last time we looked at DATEPART(). This post is all about the DATENAME() function. So many similarities There are many similarities between DATEPART and DATENAME. Where DATEPART returns the date or time part as an…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATEPART()
In my previous posts in this series we’ve seen reference to Transact-SQL (T-SQL) functions that are used to get the specific part of a date and/or time (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, etc.). This…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: more functions you should never use
Previously we looked at four built-in functions to get the current date and time in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database using Transact-SQL (T-SQL). We identified that out of the options provided, SYSUTCDATETIME() is the…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATETIMEOFFSET
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and times in a more intelligent way than the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME…
Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATETIME2
This post continues our look at date and time data types in SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 introduced new data types to handle dates and times in a more intelligent way than the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME…
Why is a value in DATETIME2 8 bytes, but in BINARY it is 9 bytes?
In the #sqlhelp Slack channel on the SQL Server Community Slack workspace last month, Jemma Hooper asked: When trying to CAST or CONVERT a datetime2 value to binary(8), I’m getting a “binary or text data…
Be Wary of Date Formatting in T-SQL
Today’s public service announcement is a reminder to be wary of date formatting in SQL Server. On a recent mailing list discussion, one person demonstrated the following code (which I’ve adapted for this post): SET…
Data Efficiency in SQL Server: DATETIME
This is the first in a short series of posts about how I assign efficient data types when designing a new table or database. Use less space with DATETIME2 We all know that the DATETIME column…