Question

Can a Timestamp (rowversion) column in a SQL Server table be queried? If so, how?

I’d like to do something like this:

Select * From MyTable Where MyTimestampColumn = "???"

But am not sure what to put in for “???”

Thanks – Randy

Answer 1

The timestamp datatype is equivalent to binary(8). You can query against it:

create table #t (somecolumn varchar(64), mytimestampcolumn timestamp)

insert into #t (somecolumn) select 'hello world'
insert into #t (somecolumn) select 'foo'
select * from #t where mytimestampcolumn = 0x0000000000000978 -- this value will vary 

drop table #t

Note that timestamp has been deprecated in Sql Server 2008. In previous versions of SQL Server (2005, 2000), rowversion is a synonym for timestamp to help with future migration.