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…
It occurred to me that we haven’t covered the TIMESTAMP data type in this series about dates and times. TIMESTAMP is the Windows Millennium Edition of data types. It has nothing to do with date…
We have come on quite a journey so far. SQL Server and Azure SQL Database provide date and time data types to help you design the best possible database. You can read more about that…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Last week I spoke about a world wary data type for storing dates and times in a single column, with a granularity of three milliseconds, DATETIME. But let’s say you don’t need that kind of…
Last year I ran a series of posts about Database Fundamentals. Over the next few weeks, I will cover the basics of various date and time data types in SQL Server, when to use them,…
Nested views are bad. Let’s get that out of the way. What is a nested view anyway? Imagine that you have a SELECT statement you tend to use all over the place (a very common…
(Last edited on 9 January 2020) Note: This was originally written for the book SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out, but did not meet the publishing deadline. A revised version is now included in the…
For the last five months or so, I have been helping some really smart people put words on paper, both the physical and electronic kind, which is hopefully going to culminate in an actual technical…
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…
Last week we looked at ACID compliance. This week we dive a little deeper into the Isolation portion, and what it all means. Isolation levels work to manage how my transactions may be isolated from…
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…