Transact-SQL includes a set of functions that let you retrieve the current date and time or retrieve the individual parts of a DATETIME or SMALLDATETIME value. For example, you can extract the day, month or year from a datetime value, as well as the quarter, week, hour or even the millisecond. In this article, I describe each of these functions and provide examples that demonstrate how to use these functions to retrieve datetime data in SQL Server. Note that this article assumes that you have a working knowledge of T-SQL and the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME data types. For more information about these types, see part one in this series, Basics for working with DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME in SQL Server 2005.
Retrieving the current date and time
One of the handiest datetime functions in T-SQL is GETDATE, which retrieves the current date and time based on the clock settings on the local system. To use GETDATE, simply call the function in your T-SQL statement without specifying any arguments, as in the following example:
SELECT GETDATE() AS [Current Date/Time]
In this case, I use GETDATE in the SELECT list to retrieve the date/time value. (Note that you must include the ending set of parentheses even if you don't pass in any arguments.) The statement returns results similar to the following:
| Current Date/Time |
| 2008-07-29 10:45:13.327 |
By default, the GETDATE function returns the datetime value in the format shown here. However, you can change the format of the results by using the CONVERT function. For information about using CONVERT, refer to part two in this tip.
Another Transact-SQL function that is just as easy to use is GETUTCDATE, which retrieves the current Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) -- also referred to as Greenwich Mean Time. The retrieved value is based on the clock and time zone settings on the local system. As you saw with GETDATE, you call GETUTCDATE within your Transact-SQL statement without including any arguments, as shown in the following example:
SELECT GETUTCDATE() AS [UTC Date/Time]
When you run this statement, you receive results similar to the following:
| UTC Date/Time |
| 2008-07-29 17:45:13.327 |
Notice that the time returned here is seven hours later than the time shown in the previous example. I ran both of these statements at the same time on a system configured for the Pacific time zone (during daylight savings time).
As you've seen in the last two examples, the functions are included within the SELECT list. However, the functions can be especially beneficial when using them to define a default value in your table definition. For example, the following three statements create the Orders table -- including a DATETIME column (OrderDate) -- insert data into the table and retrieve that data:
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
OrderID INT PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY,
Product VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
OrderAmt INT NOT NULL,
OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT GETDATE()
)
GO
INSERT INTO Orders (Product, OrderAmt)
VALUES('Test Product', 12)
GO
SELECT * FROM Orders
The OrderDate column definition includes a DEFAULT clause that specifies GETDATE as the default value. As a result, when you insert a row into the table, the current date and time are automatically inserted into the column, as shown in the results returned by the SELECT statement:
| OrderID | Product | OrderAmt | OrderDate |
| 1 | Test Product | 12 | 2008-07-29 10:46:47.420 |
You can use the information as a timestamp in order to track when records are added and to assist in auditing the data, if necessary. This is also handy for other operations that use the timestamp when retrieving data. For example, an extract, transform and load (ETL) process might reference the timestamp when determining whether to extract or update data.
Retrieving the year, month or day
In some cases, you might want to retrieve the year, month or day from a DATETIME or SMALLDATETIME value. One approach is to use the YEAR, MONTH or DAY function to retrieve the necessary data (as an integer). The following SELECT statement is an example of how this works:
SELECT YEAR(PostTime) AS [Year],
MONTH(PostTime) AS [Month],
DAY(PostTime) AS [Day]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
The SELECT clause includes three column expressions. The first one uses the YEAR function to retrieve the year from the PostTime column in the DatabaseLog table (in the AdventureWorks sample database). When you call the YEAR function, you specify the column name (or other expression) as an argument to the function. The MONTH and DAY functions work the same way. The second column expression in the SELECT clause uses the MONTH function to retrieve the month from the PostTime column, and the third expression uses DAY to retrieve the day. The following results show you the type of information that the statement returns:
| Year | Month | Day |
| 2005 | 10 | 14 |
Each value is extracted from the PostTime column and returned as an integer. (The value stored in the table is 2005-10-14 01:58:27.567.)
These functions are an easy way to retrieve the year, month or day, but, in some cases, you might want more control over the type of values returned as well as the format of those values. In addition, you might want to extract the time from the date/time value. Fortunately, Transact-SQL supports functions that provide this type of functionality.
Retrieving parts of a date/time value
Like the YEAR, MONTH and DAY functions, the DATEPART function returns an integer representing a specific part of the date/time value. For example, the following SELECT statement returns the same results as the preceding example:
SELECT DATEPART(yy, PostTime) AS [Year],
DATEPART(mm, PostTime) AS [Month],
DATEPART(dd, PostTime) AS [Day]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
The first thing to note is that, when you call DATEPART, you specify two arguments. The first argument determines the date/time component to retrieve, and the second argument is the source column. For the first argument, you must use one of the supported abbreviations to specify the datetime part. The following table lists the date/time parts you can retrieve and the abbreviations you must use to retrieve those parts:
| Date/time part | Abbreviations |
| year | yy, yyyy |
| quarter | qq, q |
| month | mm, m |
| day of year | dy, y |
| day | dd, d |
| week | wk, ww |
| weekday | dw |
| hour | hh |
| minute | mi, n |
| second | ss, s |
| millisecond | ms |
For some datetime parts, more than one abbreviation is supported. For example, you can use "yy" or "yyyy" as your first DATEPART argument to retrieve the year from the date/time value. Notice that the table includes abbreviations for date/time parts other than year, month or day. In other words, you can retrieve the quarter, the day of the year, the week of the year, and the weekday as shown in the following SELECT statement:
SELECT DATEPART(qq, PostTime) AS [Quarter],
DATEPART(dy, PostTime) AS [DayOfYear],
DATEPART(wk, PostTime) AS [Week],
DATEPART(dw, PostTime) AS [Weekday]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
As in the preceding example, each instance of DATEPART includes two arguments: the date/time part abbreviation and the source column. The statement returns the following results:
| Quarter | DayOfYear | Week | Weekday |
| 4 | 287 | 42 | 6 |
Notice that the weekday is shown as 6. By default, SQL Server begins the week with Sunday, so weekday 6 is equivalent to Friday.
The preceding two examples retrieved only values related to dates. However, as the table below shows, you can also retrieve data related to time:
SELECT DATEPART(hh, PostTime) AS [Hour],
DATEPART(mi, PostTime) AS [Minute],
DATEPART(ss, PostTime) AS [Second],
DATEPART(ms, PostTime) AS [Millisecond]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
In this case, the statement is retrieving the hour, minute, second and millisecond, as shown in the following results:
| Hour | Minute | Second | Millisecond |
| 1 | 58 | 27 | 567 |
The primary limitation of the DATEPART function is that it returns only integers, which is why Friday is shown as 6. However, if you want to display actual names of days and months, you can use the DATENAME function. The DATENAME function works exactly like the DATEPART function. DATENAME takes the same number of arguments and supports the same abbreviations. For example, if you want to retrieve the year, month and day, as you saw in an earlier example, you simply replace DATEPART with DATENAME:
SELECT DATENAME(yy, PostTime) AS [Year],
DATENAME(mm, PostTime) AS [Month],
DATENAME(dd, PostTime) AS [Day]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
Now your results will look like the following:
| Year | Month | Day |
| 2005 | October | 14 |
The month value is now October, rather than 10. The year and day, however, remain integers because that's the only way to represent them. You can also use the DATENAME function for other date/time components, as in the following example:
SELECT DATENAME(qq, PostTime) AS [Quarter],
DATENAME(dy, PostTime) AS [DayOfYear],
DATENAME(wk, PostTime) AS [Week],
DATENAME(dw, PostTime) AS [Weekday]
FROM DatabaseLog
WHERE DatabaseLogID = 1
Once again, I've replaced DATEPART with DATENAME, but changed nothing else. The statement returns the following results.
| Quarter | DayOfYear | Week | Weekday |
| 4 | 287 | 42 | Friday |
Notice that the quarter, day of the year and week are still integers, but the weekday now says Friday, rather than 6. You can also use DATENAME to retrieve the time components of a date/time value, but the results will always be integers, as you would expect.
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