date difference in sql server 2005 , 2008

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how to get difference between two dates in sql server from two different columns and then also store the difference in another column..

lets say .. column 1 has date 1,
column 2 has date 2,

now sql find their differnce i:e , (date2 - date 1) and store the difference in column 3 ..

how can i do this ?

Posted 6-Jan-13 10:15am

syed armaan hussain

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Solution 2

There's a rule of thumb that in an OLTP database, you should never store values that are calculated.

If you need the difference between two dates in your queries, you have lot's of other (better) options. For example:
- calculate the difference in the SELECT statement
- create a view for the table where the calculation is performed
- create a calculated column in the table and so on

The problem you're facing if you store calculated values is that you have to make 100% sure that every time any of the dates is modified, the result of the calculation is updated correspondingly. This requires extra work in the database and in most cases, for reliability, cannot be left for client program responsibility.

Posted 6-Jan-13 11:15am

Wendelius

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Christian Graus 6-Jan-13 17:30pm

Yes, I agree, this is also a good point. But sometimes you have to denormalise a database for performance reasons

Wendelius 6-Jan-13 18:07pm

That's true, but if it can be avoided, I think it should :)

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Christian Graus · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-06T10:19:00

Solution 1

update mytable set col3 = datediff(datepart, date1, date2)

datediff[^]

Posted 6-Jan-13 10:19am

Christian Graus

Comments

syed armaan hussain 6-Jan-13 16:23pm

is it neccessary that dates in sql server should be in datetime data type ??? what if i saved it as varchar data type ?? will the date diff function will not work with varchar data type ?

Christian Graus 6-Jan-13 16:26pm

you can cast it to a datetime first, but you should never do this, it's retarded. Store dates as dates, so that you know they are valid dates ( and not random strings ) and so the DB can work efficiently with them.

syed armaan hussain 6-Jan-13 16:44pm

thanks alot