This video is a quick overview of using the SQL Server Datetime function.

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The datetime is actually made up of two different pieces:

1) Date

2) Time

This can be demonstrated using the SQL Cast function on a string to convert it to a datetime.

Here is some SQL for the Date portion:

select cast('20121019' as datetime)

Here is some SQL for the Time portion:

select cast('10:05:00' as datetime)

Now, you can also simply use the built-in getdate() function to bring back the current system time.

select getdate()

And finally, I want to bring back a datetime from an actual table.

In this case, we will use the employee table from the SQL Training Online Simple DB:

select hire_date from employee

If we want to convert the result to a more formatted string, we will use the TSQL CONVERT function:

select convert(varchar,hire_date,104)

from employee

In this example, we are converting from a datetime to a varchar (string). The result will be in the format of 104.

To translate 104 to a datetime format, you will want to look at the MSDN Documentation.

And, that is how you use the Datetime SQL.

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