Is there a way to get dates with custom formats in SQL Server?

Question

In Oracle, you can use:

SELECT to_char(sysdate, \'yyyy-mm\') FROM dual;

to show just the year and month portion of a date. Additionally, you ca

Answer 1

Currently the best option is to have a CLR function that is a wrapper to .NET's DateTime.ToString(string format).

If you don't want a separate function, you can build the required string from pieces:

YEAR(@d) + '-' + MONTH(@d) + '-' + DAY(@d)

As for the definite solution, there will be a formatting function in the next version of SQL Server.