DATETIMEOFFSET

The DATETIMEOFFSET value contains the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction of a second, and number of minutes before or after Coordinated Universal (UTC) time.

The fraction is stored to 6 decimal places. A DATETIMEOFFSET value requires 10 bytes of storage.

You can use a T between the date and time. You can use a Z to indicate a time zone offset of +00:00 (UTC).

Although the range of possible dates for the DATETIMEOFFSET data type is the same as the DATE type (covering years 0001 to 9999), the useful range of DATETIMEOFFSET 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 DATETIMEOFFSET may be incomplete.

Two DATETIMEOFFSET values are considered identical when they represent the same instant in UTC, regardless of the TIME ZONE offset applied. For example, the following statement returns Yes because the results are considered identical:

IF CAST('2009-07-15 08:00:00 -08:00' AS DATETIMEOFFSET) = 
CAST('2009-07-15 11:00:00 -05:00' AS DATETIMEOFFSET) THEN 
SELECT  'Yes'
ELSE
SELECT 'No'
END IF;

If you omit the time zone offset from a DATETIMEOFFSET value, it defaults to the current UTC offset of the client regardless of whether the timestamp represents a date and time in standard time or daylight time. For example, if the client is located in the Eastern Standard time zone and executes the following statement while daylight time is in effect, then a timestamp with a time zone appropriate for the Atlantic Standard time zone (-4 hours from UTC) will be returned.

SELECT CAST('2009/01/30 12:34:55' AS DATETIMEOFFSET);

The comparison of DATETIMEOFFSET values with timestamps without time zones is not recommended because the default time zone offset of the client varies with the geographic location of the client and with the time of the year.

Execute the following statement to determine the current time zone offset in minutes for a client:

SELECT CONNECTION_PROPERTY( 'TimeZoneAdjustment' );

• timestamp_with_time_zone_format option
• DATE data type
• TIME data type
• TIMESTAMP data type
• TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type
• Date and time functions