SQL Server Tutorial: Date manipulation

Want to learn more? Take the full course at https://learn.datacamp.com/courses/writing-functions-and-stored-procedures-in-sql-server at your own pace. More than a video, you'll learn hands-on coding & quickly apply skills to your daily work. --- Now you're ready for more advanced date manipulation. In this lesson, we will introduce GETDATE() and DATEADD(), as well as expand on DATEDIFF() from earlier. GETDATE() is a great SQL function that returns the current timestamp of the computer's operating system that is running SQL Server. You can use it instead of manually setting date values, which saves you time when executing queries. Your code will also be more consistent and less error-prone. You will use GETDATE() often when writing your own functions and stored procedures. Here you can see how to select GETDATE() and set a variable to its return value. DATEADD() is another powerful date function. It adds an integer value to the date passed for the datepart specified. Remember datepart arguments from the beginning of the course? That's how you tell SQL Server which part of the date you'd like to manipulate. Here we are adding one day to the date value of 2/27/2019. We can even combine DATEADD() and GETDATE() to select yesterday's date. There is no DATESUBTRACT function in SQL because we don't need it. We can just add negative numbers to get the same effect. What if we need to know how many passengers were picked up in taxis yesterday? We can use DATEADD() and GETDATE() in the WHERE clause of our SELECT statement. This query will return yesterday's passenger count regardless of the actual date by subtracting one from the value of GETDATE(). Remember DATEDIFF() from earlier? It's a SQL function that counts how many times the datepart boundary specified has been crossed between two dates. That's not always the same as the difference between two dates as we often think about it. The first example shows the day boundary has been crossed once between 2/