How to convert SQL Server's timestamp column to datetime format

As SQL Server returns timestamp like 'Nov 14 2011 03:12:12:947PM', is there some easy way to convert string to date format like 'Y-m-d H:i:s'.

So far I use

date('Y-m-d H:i:s',strtotime('Nov 14 2011 03:12:12:947PM'))

SQL Server's TIMESTAMP datatype has nothing to do with a date and time!

It's just a hexadecimal representation of a consecutive 8 byte integer - it's only good for making sure a row hasn't change since it's been read.

You can read off the hexadecimal integer or if you want a BIGINT. As an example:

SELECT CAST (0x0000000017E30D64 AS BIGINT)

The result is

400756068

In newer versions of SQL Server, it's being called RowVersion - since that's really what it is. See the MSDN docs on ROWVERSION:

> Is a data type that exposes automatically generated, unique binary numbers within a database. rowversion is generally used as a mechanism > for version-stamping table rows. The > rowversion data type is just an incrementing number and does not > preserve a date or a time. To record a date or time, use a datetime2 > data type.

So you cannot convert a SQL Server TIMESTAMP to a date/time - it's just not a date/time.

But if you're saying timestamp but really you mean a DATETIME column - then you can use any of those valid date formats described in the CAST and CONVERT topic in the MSDN help. Those are defined and supported "out of the box" by SQL Server. Anything else is not supported, e.g. you have to do a lot of manual casting and concatenating (not recommended).

The format you're looking for looks a bit like the ODBC canonical (style = 121):

DECLARE @today DATETIME = SYSDATETIME()

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(50), @today, 121)

gives:

2011-11-14 10:29:00.470

SQL Server 2012 will finally have a FORMAT function to do custom formatting......

The simplest way of doing this is:

SELECT id,name,FROM_UNIXTIME(registration_date) FROM `tbl_registration`;

This gives the date column atleast in a readable format. Further if you want to change te format click here.

Using cast you can get date from a timestamp field:

SELECT CAST(timestamp_field AS DATE) FROM tbl_name

My coworkers helped me with this:

select CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), <tms_column>, 112), count(*)
from table where <tms_column> > '2012-09-10'
group by CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), <tms_column>, 112);

or

select CONVERT(DATE, <tms_column>, 112), count(*)
from table where <tms_column> > '2012-09-10'
group by CONVERT(DATE, <tms_column>, 112);

Works fine, except this message:

> Implicit conversion from data type varchar to timestamp is not allowed. Use the CONVERT function to run this query

So yes, TIMESTAMP (RowVersion) is NOT a DATE :)

To be honest, I fidddled around quite some time myself to find a way to convert it to a date.

Best way is to convert it to INT and compare. That's what this type is meant to be.

If you want a date - just add a Datetime column and live happily ever after :)

cheers mac

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." — Inigo Montoya

The timestamp has absolutely no relationship to time as marc_s originally said.

declare @Test table (
     TestId int identity(1,1) primary key clustered
    ,Ts     timestamp
    ,CurrentDt datetime default getdate()
    ,Something varchar(max)
)

insert into @Test (Something)
    select name from sys.tables
waitfor delay '00:00:10'

insert into @Test (Something)
    select name from sys.tables

select * from @Test

Notice in the output that Ts (hex) increments by one for each record, but the actual time has a gap of 10 seconds. If it were related to time then there would be a gap in the timestamp to correspond with the difference in the time.

Robert Mauro has the correct comment. For those who know the Sybase origins, datetime was really two separate integers, one for date, one for time, so timestamp aka rowversion could just be considered the raw value captured from the server. Much faster.

After impelemtation of conversion to integer CONVERT(BIGINT, [timestamp]) as Timestamp I've got the result like

> 446701117 > 446701118 > 446701119 > 446701120 > 446701121 > 446701122 > 446701123 > 446701124 > 446701125 > 446701126

Yes, this is not a date and time, It's serial numbers

for me works: TO_DATE('19700101', 'yyyymmdd') + (TIME / 24 / 60 / 60) (oracle DB)

I had the same problem with timestamp eg:'29-JUL-20 04.46.42.000000000 PM'. I wanted to turn it into 'yyyy-MM-dd' format. The solution that finally works for me is

SELECT TO_CHAR(mytimestamp, 'YYYY-MM-DD') FROM mytable;

I will assume that you've done a data dump as insert statements, and you (or whoever Googles this) are attempting to figure out the date and time, or translate it for use elsewhere (eg: to convert to MySQL inserts). This is actually easy in any programming language.

Let's work with this:

CAST(0x0000A61300B1F1EB AS DateTime)

This Hex representation is actually two separate data elements... Date and Time. The first four bytes are date, the second four bytes are time.

• The date is 0x0000A613
• The time is 0x00B1F1EB

Convert both of the segments to integers using the programming language of your choice (it's a direct hex to integer conversion, which is supported in every modern programming language, so, I will not waste space with code that may or may not be the programming language you're working in).

• The date of 0x0000A613 becomes 42515
• The time of 0x00B1F1EB becomes 11661803

Now, what to do with those integers:

Date

Date is since 01/01/1900, and is represented as days. So, add 42,515 days to 01/01/1900, and your result is 05/27/2016.

Time

Time is a little more complex. Take that INT and do the following to get your time in microseconds since midnight (pseudocode):

TimeINT=Hex2Int(HexTime)
MicrosecondsTime = TimeINT*10000/3

From there, use your language's favorite function calls to translate microseconds (38872676666.7 µs in the example above) into time.

The result would be 10:47:52.677

Why not try FROM_UNIXTIME(unix_timestamp, format)?

Some of them actually does covert to a date-time from SQL Server 2008 onwards.

Try the following SQL query and you will see for yourself:

SELECT CAST (0x00009CEF00A25634 AS datetime)

The above will result in 2009-12-30 09:51:03:000 but I have encountered ones that actually don't map to a date-time.

Not sure if I'm missing something here but can't you just convert the timestamp like this:

CONVERT(VARCHAR,CAST(ZEIT AS DATETIME), 110)