SQL SERVER – Tips from the SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – System and Time Data Types – Day 16 of 35

Answer a simple quiz at the end of the blog post and:

• Every day, one winner from India will get Joes 2 Pros Volume 3.
• Every day, one winner from the United States will get Joes 2 Pros Volume 3.

System and Time Data Types

Keeping track of date and time data points has always been a critical part of online transactional databases. For example, each sales invoice record needs a date-time stamp, as do systems which track quotes and customer contacts regarding sales opportunities.

Think of how many times during your workday you rely on a date-time stamp as helpful metadata to sort or locate the latest information in a report or data source. Global organizations, in particular, have a need for their in-house communication, reporting, and collaboration tools to appropriately convey accurate date and time information in order to keep every part of the organization in sync.

Recap of DateTime Functions

GETDATE( ) and SELECT SYSDATETIME( ) both return the current date and time in your time zone. However, GETDATE( ) shows fractional seconds expressed in milliseconds (.333 second), and SYSDATETIME( ) shows fractional seconds expressed in nanoseconds (.3333333 second). SYSDATETIME( ) return similar results but their precisions differ.

What time is it right now in the UK? UTC is Coordinated Universal Time, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). (UTC is also known by the terms zulu time, world time, and universal time.)

SELECT GETUTCDATE( ) will show the current time expressed in terms of UTC. GETUTCDATE( ) is less precise than SYSUTCDATETIME ( ). However, there is a UTC function that gets down to the nanoseconds, SYSUTCDATETIME( ). When we run all 4 of these functions together, we see the two top times in my local time zone (in my case, the Pacific time zone) and the two bottom times in UTC.

Question 16

Which one of the following functions will return the date and time in the current time zone to a precision of milliseconds?

1. GETDATE( )
2. SYSDATETIME( )
3. GETUTCDATE( )
4. SYSUTCDATETIME( )

Rules

Please leave your answer in the comment section below with the correct option, explanation and your country of residence.

• Every day, one winner will be announced from the United States.
• Every day, one winner will be announced from India.
• A valid answer must contain country of residence of the person who answers.
• Please check my Facebook page for winner's name and correct answer.
• Winner from the United States will get Joes 2 Pros Volume 3.
• Winner from India will get Joes 2 Pros Volume 3.

The contest is open till the next blog post shows up at http://blog.sqlauthority.com which is next day GTM+2.5.