Question

I am importing some data from excel to db, the issue is I want to set the specific default value like 00/00/0000 to datetime column when there is no date available from the Excel file.

The getdate() sets the date to current one, but I want to set to a specific date, is it possible to achieve something like this.

Answer 1

Sure you can set a default value – but be aware: DATETIME has a valid range from 1/1/1753 through 12/31/9999 – so setting it to 0/0/0000 will NOT be a valid DATETIME value!

If you need such a value – use either DATETIME2 in SQL Server 2008 (range is from 1/1/0001 through 12/31/9999) – or use DATE (without any time – same range as DATETIME2)

Or: just make your DATETIME/DATETIME2/DATE column nullable and insert NULL when no date is present – that would be the cleanest solution.