Question

I have column with varchar values like “022008” that I need to convert into a datetime like “02/01/2008”. This will run on millions of records for a conversion process. What is an efficient select statement for doing this?

Answer 1

How about something like:

SET DATEFORMAT MDY
GO
Select StringValue, Cast(Stuff(StringValue, 3, 0, '-01-') As datetime)
From Table...

On a million rows on my local machine, that returned in 10 seconds.