T-SQL 101: 68 Current date and time in SQL Server T-SQL with SYSDATETIME and SYSDATETIMEOFFSET

It’s really common to need to know the current date and time in T-SQL code. Ever since the beginning of the SQL Server product, we’ve had a function called GETDATE(). It returns the current date and time of the server as a datetime value.

In SQL Server 2008, we got new higher precision data types, and so new current date and time functions were added as well.

SYSDATETIME() is a function that returns the current date and time as a datetime2 value. And SYSDATETIMEOFFSET() returns the timezone offset for the server as well.

You can see the output below:

You might also want the current date and time, based on Universal Time (UTC aka GMT). SYSUTCDATETIME() does that. It calculates UTC time by deducting the server’s current timezone offset from the current local date and time.

Learning T-SQL

It’s worth your while becoming proficient in SQL. If you’d like to learn a lot about T-SQL in a hurry, our Writing T-SQL Queries for SQL Server course is online, on-demand, and low cost.

2020-05-04