Hi all The SSMSE shows timestamp fields as "Binary Data" How do you view the actual date and time stored in this field ? Thanks Andrew
Andrew, A timestamp field is not actually date and time, but a binary indicating (in database terms) when in the course of transactions on the database the row was last changed. (Ideally this datatype should be named rowversion, not timestamp.) You should read: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182776.aspx A datetime is the datatype that holds date and time. All of this is made more confusing since SQL Server supports the ANSI function named CURRENT_TIMESTAMP which returns a datetime value. :-\ RLF "Andrew Kennard" wrote in message news:O9eGKhd3IHA.1240@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... > Hi all > > The SSMSE shows timestamp fields as "Binary Data" > > How do you view the actual date and time stored in this field ? > > Thanks > > Andrew > >
Just a clarification - the timestamp does not indicate when the data was last changed - just that the data has changed. You can use this in multi-user applications to check to see if someone else updated the data since you read the data. Chuck Heinzelman "Russell Fields" wrote in message news:%233LLGzf3IHA.4856@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... > Andrew, > > A timestamp field is not actually date and time, but a binary indicating > (in database terms) when in the course of transactions on the database the > row was last changed. (Ideally this datatype should be named rowversion, > not timestamp.) You should read: > http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182776.aspx > > A datetime is the datatype that holds date and time. > > All of this is made more confusing since SQL Server supports the ANSI > function named CURRENT_TIMESTAMP which returns a datetime value. :-\ > > RLF > > > "Andrew Kennard" wrote in message > news:O9eGKhd3IHA.1240@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... >> Hi all >> >> The SSMSE shows timestamp fields as "Binary Data" >> >> How do you view the actual date and time stored in this field ? >> >> Thanks >> >> Andrew >> >> > >
