Question

Does SQLs built-in DateTime type has any merits over nvarchar type?

If it were you , which one would you use?

I need to store dates in my SQLServer database and I’m curious to know which one is better and why it is better.

I also want to know what happens if I for example store dates as string literals (I mean nvarchar )? Does it take longer to be searched? Or they are the same in terms of performance ?

And for the last question. How can I send a date from my c# application to the sql field of tye DateTime? Is it any different from the c#s DateTime ?

Answer 1

You’re given a date datetype for a reason, why would you not use it?

What happens when you store “3/2/2012” in a text field? Is it March 2nd? Is it February 3rd?

Store the date in a date or datetime field, and do any formatting of the date after the fact.

EDIT

If you have to store dates like 1391/7/1, your choices are:

• Assuming you’re using SQL Server 2008 or greater, use the datetime2 data type; it allows dates earlier than 1753/01/01 (which is what datetime stops at).
• Assuming you’re using SQL Server 2005 or earlier, store the dates as Roman calendar dates, and then in your application, use date/time functions to convert the date and time to the Farsi calendar.