TIMESTAMP data type

Stores a point in time containing the year, month, day, hour, minute, second and fraction of a second.

Syntax

TIMESTAMP

Remarks

The fraction is stored to 6 decimal places. A TIMESTAMP value requires 8 bytes of storage.

Although the range of possible dates for the TIMESTAMP data type is the same as the DATE type (covering years 0001 to 9999), the useful range of TIMESTAMP date types is from 1600-02-28 23:59:59 to 7911-01-01 00:00:00. Before and after this range the time portion of the TIMESTAMP may be incomplete.

When a TIMESTAMP value is converted to TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, the connection's time_zone_adjustment setting is used for the time zone offset in the result. In other words, the value is considered to be "local" to the connection. When a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE value is converted to TIMESTAMP, the offset is discarded.

Note

When the precision of the TIMESTAMP is dropped, built-in functions that pertain to minutes or seconds will produce meaningless results.

Standards and compatibility

SQL/2008 Compatible with SQL/2008.
Transact-SQL Adaptive Server Enterprise uses the DATETIME type for timestamp values.

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