I have a table listing people along with their date of birth (currently a nvarchar(25))
How can I convert that to a date, and then calculate their age in years?
After trying MANY methods, this works 100% of the time using the modern MS SQL FORMAT function instead of convert to style 112. Either would work but this is the least code.
Can anyone find a date combination which does not work? I don't think there is one :)
--Set parameters, or choose from table.column instead:
DECLARE @DOB DATE = '2000/02/29' -- If @DOB is a leap day...
,@ToDate DATE = '2018/03/01' --...there birthday in this calculation will be
--0+ part tells SQL to calc the char(8) as numbers:
SELECT [Age] = (0+ FORMAT(@ToDate,'yyyyMMdd') - FORMAT(@DOB,'yyyyMMdd') ) /10000
Here is a technique which seems to work around the edge cases: the end of the year and leap Februaries.
The problem with datediff(year,…,…)
is that it only finds the difference between the years, and not the actual dates, which is a bit naïve in my opinion. This is only reliable if the date of birth is 1st Jan.
The solution is to time warp the date of birth to the first of January, and the asking date by the same amount.
Because of the leap year problem using the day of year is also unreliable, so I use the month and day to do the time warp:
CREATE FUNCTION age(@then AS date,@now AS date) RETURNS int AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @month INT = month(@then)-1;
DECLARE @day INT = day(@then)-1;
SET @then=dateadd(month,-@month,@then);
SET @then=dateadd(day,-@day,@then);
SET @now=dateadd(month,-@month,@now;)
SET @now=dateadd(day,-@day,@now);
RETURN datediff(year,@then,@now);
END;
You can write this more compactly, of course. You can even write it in one line, if that’s your idea of having a good time:
CREATE FUNCTION age(@then AS date,@now AS date) RETURNS int AS
BEGIN
RETURN datediff(
year,
dateadd(day,-day(@then)+1,dateadd(month,-month(@then)+1,@then)),
dateadd(day,-day(@then)+1,dateadd(month,-month(@then)+1,@now))
);
END;
but that’s only showing off, and it’s less efficient as it needs to recalculate the offsets.
DECLARE @DOB datetime
set @DOB ='11/25/1985'
select floor(
( cast(convert(varchar(8),getdate(),112) as int)-
cast(convert(varchar(8),@DOB,112) as int) ) / 10000
)
source: http://beginsql.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/how-to-calculate-age-in-sql-server/
How about this:
SET @Age = CAST(DATEDIFF(Year, @DOB, @Stamp) as int)
IF (CAST(DATEDIFF(DAY, DATEADD(Year, @Age, @DOB), @Stamp) as int) < 0)
SET @Age = @Age - 1
We used something like here, but then taking the average age:
ROUND(avg(CONVERT(int,DATEDIFF(hour,DOB,GETDATE())/8766.0)),0) AS AverageAge
Notice, the ROUND is outside rather than inside. This will allow for the AVG to be more accurate and we ROUND only once. Making it faster too.
Declare @dob datetime
Declare @today datetime
Set @dob = '05/20/2000'
set @today = getdate()
select CASE
WHEN dateadd(year, datediff (year, @dob, @today), @dob) > @today
THEN datediff (year, @dob, @today) - 1
ELSE datediff (year, @dob, @today)
END as Age