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Asked: 2026-06-08T21:47:03+00:00

According to this MSDN article : The optional time zone indicator, Z, is used

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According to this MSDN article:

“The optional time zone indicator, Z, is used to make it easier to map XML datetime values that have time zone information to SQL Server datetime values that have no time zone. Z is the indicator for time zone UTC-0. Other time zones are indicated with HH:MM offset in the + or – direction. For example: 2006-12-12T23:45:12-08:00.”

But when I run:

declare @d datetime;
set @d=getdate();
print CONVERT(varchar(40), @d, 127)

the result is 2012-07-31T14:04:11.447. No time zone part. What am I doing wrong?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The DateTime type doesn’t include a time zone, and the GETDATE() function returns a DateTime.

    Instead, you need to use SQL Server’s DateTimeOffset type, which was introduced in SQL Server 2008. That would make your example:

    declare @d datetimeoffset;
set @d=sysdatetimeoffset();
print CONVERT(varchar(40), @d, 127)

    Note the use of the SYSDATETIMEOFFSET() function.

    That said, what are you actually trying to achieve, in practice? If you have some actual timezoneless data (e.g. data in a DateTime column) from which you’re trying to extract the time zone, that’s going to be tricky.

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