Datatype

[c_bowen]

I am using Visual Studio .NET 2003 with SQL Server 2000. I am trying to
insert the date and time into a SQL database by using hour(now). I am
having a hard time trying to figure out which datatype to use in SQL to
store this value. I have tried using datetime, char, nchar, text and
nothing seems to work. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Regards, :)

Christopher Bowen

[Simon Hayes]

Do you mean that you want to store a time without a date? This isn't
possible in MSSQL, since there is only a single datetime data type.

http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2206
http://www.karaszi.com/sqlserver/info_datetime.asp

Simon

[David Portas]

Use a DATETIME or SMALLDATETIME column.

INSERT INTO YourTable (dt_col) VALUES (CURRENT_TIMEST AMP)

--
David Portas
SQL Server MVP
--

[Gert-Jan Strik]

Christopher,

the function call Hour(Now) will return the current hour, which is an
integer. I would expect this information to be of little use. However,
if you want to store this in an SQL-Server database, then a column of
type tinyint would suffice.

HTH,
Gert-Jan
c_*****@earthli nk.net wrote:

I am using Visual Studio .NET 2003 with SQL Server 2000. I am trying to
insert the date and time into a SQL database by using hour(now). I am
having a hard time trying to figure out which datatype to use in SQL to
store this value. I have tried using datetime, char, nchar, text and
nothing seems to work. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Regards, :)

Christopher Bowen

[DH]

It would probably be helpful to see your code and it's not 100% clear what
you're trying to do. I'm guessing hour(now) is a .NET function? Does it
simply return the number of the current hour? That would be some sort of
INT, which would be a datatype mismatch with the datatypes you say you've
tried. Your note mentioned "insert the date and time", which wouldn't
simply be the current hour, anyway.

When I want to insert the date and time, I usually use SQL Server's
getdate() function to supply the value. A T-SQL example would be:

create table foo (col1 char(10),col2 datetime)
go
insert foo values ('abc',getdate( ))
go
select * from foo
go

[results]
(1 row(s) affected)

col1 col2
---------- ------------------------------------------------------
abc 2005-02-25 15:16:38.367

(1 row(s) affected)
Use the datetime datatype if you can. In my experience, using character or
numeric types for storing dates and times usually ends up in grief.

By the way, I usually set things up so that SQL Server is responsible for
supplying the time, rather than the application. That way, if the various
workstation's or web server's clocks are a little bit off, the time values
of rows inserted/updated will still be synchronized across your
applications.

<c_*****@earthl ink.net> wrote in message
news:11******** *************@l 41g2000cwc.goog legroups.com...

I am using Visual Studio .NET 2003 with SQL Server 2000. I am trying to
insert the date and time into a SQL database by using hour(now). I am
having a hard time trying to figure out which datatype to use in SQL to
store this value. I have tried using datetime, char, nchar, text and
nothing seems to work. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
Regards, :)
Christopher Bowen