![SECOND function [Date and time]](arrow-left.gif){kind=icon}
![SIGN function [Numeric]](arrow-right.gif){kind=icon}
Returns the number of seconds since an arbitrary starting date and time, the number of seconds between two times, or adds an integer amount of seconds to a time.
SECONDS ( datetime-expression | datetime-expression, datetime-expression | datetime-expression, integer-expression )
datetime-expression A date and time.
integer-expression The number of seconds to be added to the datetime-expression. If integer-expression is negative, the appropriate number of minutes are subtracted from the date/time value. If you supply an integer expression, the datetime-expression must be explicitly cast as a datetime data type.
For information on casting data types, see “CAST function [Data type conversion]”.
The following statement returns the value 3600:
SELECT ( SECONDS( '1998-07-13 06:07:12' ) - SECONDS( '1998-07-13 05:07:12' )) FROM iq_dummy
The following statement returns the value 14400, to signify the difference between the two times:
SELECT SECONDS( '1999-07-13 06:07:12', '1999-07-13 10:07:12' ) FROM iq_dummy
The following statement returns the datetime value 1999-05-12 21:05:12.000:
SELECT SECONDS( CAST( '1999-05-12 21:05:07' AS TIMESTAMP ), 5) FROM iq_dummy
The second syntax returns the number of whole seconds from the first date/time to the second date/time. The number might be negative.
