Best approach to remove time part of datetime in SQL Server

Question

Which method provides the best performance when removing the time portion from a datetime field in SQL Server?

a) select DATEADD(dd, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, getdate(         


        

Answer 1

I, personally, almost always use User Defined functions for this if dealing with SQL Server 2005 (or lower version), however, it should be noted that there are specific drawbacks to using UDF's, especially if applying them to WHERE clauses (see below and the comments on this answer for further details). If using SQL Server 2008 (or higher) - see below.

In fact, for most databases that I create, I add these UDF's in right near the start since I know there's a 99% chance I'm going to need them sooner or later.

I create one for "date only" & "time only" (although the "date only" one is by far the most used of the two).

Here's some links to a variety of date-related UDF's:

Essential SQL Server Date, Time and DateTime Functions
Get Date Only Function

That last link shows no less than 3 different ways to getting the date only part of a datetime field and mentions some pros and cons of each approach.

If using a UDF, it should be noted that you should try to avoid using the UDF as part of a WHERE clause in a query as this will greatly hinder performance of the query. The main reason for this is that using a UDF in a WHERE clause renders that clause as non-sargable, which means that SQL Server can no longer use an index with that clause in order to improve the speed of query execution. With reference to my own usage of UDF's, I'll frequently use the "raw" date column within the WHERE clause, but apply the UDF to the SELECTed column. In this way, the UDF is only applied to the filtered result-set and not every row of the table as part of the filter.

Of course, the absolute best approach for this is to use SQL Server 2008 (or higher) and separate out your dates and times, as the SQL Server database engine is then natively providing the individual date and time components, and can efficiently query these independently without the need for a UDF or other mechanism to extract either the date or time part from a composite datetime type.