Question

I’m using the Sybase database, How do I change SQL timestamp which appears in my database in form like: 2012-03-23 11:27:04.870000 to unixtime.

I want to be able to do something like this in sql:

select time1, unix_time_function(time1) as time1_to_unixtime from mytable

Can it be done?

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia, UNIX time is the number of seconds elapsed since 1st Jan 1970 (not including leap seconds).

Bearing that in mind (and if I haven’t completely lost it) it should just be the difference between 1970-01-01 and your time, in seconds:

SELECT time1,
       Datediff(SECOND, '1970-01-01', time1) AS time1_to_unixtime
FROM   mytable

I’m not sure whether DateDiff takes leap seconds into account, if not, there might be some adjustments needed.

Documentation for DateDiff in Sybase is here.