I have a field in a table that contains date data in the following format:

20040301

what is the best, low impact method for converting this to a useable date
field?

Try:

select
convert (datetime, '20040301', 112)

--
Tom

---------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas A. Moreau, BSc, PhD, MCSE, MCDBA
SQL Server MVP
Columnist, SQL Server Professional
Toronto, ON Canada
www.pinnaclepublishing.com/sql


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I have a field in a table that contains date data in the following format:

20040301

what is the best, low impact method for converting this to a useable date

Populate a datetime column with the data...

ALTER TABLE YourTable ADD YourDatetimeCol DATETIME
GO

UPDATE YourTable SET YourDateTimeCol=CONVERT(DATETIME, YourNonDateTimeCol)
GO

Optionally, remove the old column, make the new column non-nullable, etc...


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hi atley,

if the format of datetime string is yyyymmdd then just run following query:

select convert(datetime,'20040301') dt

--
Vishal Parkar
vgparkar@yahoo.co.in

Hi,

Have a look into the below code,

declare @col1 varchar(20)
declare @dt datetime
set @col1 ='20040301'
select @dt=convert(datetime,@col1)
select @dt

Tahnks
Hari
MCDBA

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