Data Type for date column

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SQL-Server

What should we take the data type for a column to store date in sql table?
Datetime or varchar?

Posted 27-Dec-13 19:28pm

Sumit Bhargav

Updated 27-Dec-13 19:29pm

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Siva Hyderabad 28-Dec-13 1:39am

Datetime

Sumit Bhargav 28-Dec-13 1:40am

Is that a professional way or just to solve the issue?

Christian Graus 28-Dec-13 2:00am

See my answer. It's because the type exists for a reason, and you should only use varchar if you want to write a database that does not work properly, and is slow. Why are you asking ?

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Christian Graus · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-27T19:53:00

Varchar is only used by morons. DateTime, or Date for a date with no time. That's why SQL Server offers them.

Reason not to use varchar

1 - any attempt to work with the values as dates ( what they are ), will involve casting them to date or date time

2 - any attempt to sort columns by date won't work unless you used YYYY-MM-DD.

3 - A varchar column can contain any string, so using it for dates means your data has no integrity, values like 'next Tuesday', 'In Three Weeks' and 'I like cats', are all acceptable.