Question

In a data base the data is dirty, “date” is the Database is saved as a string and in different different formats.

I want to clean the data base and put it in a new database in which date would be in DATE sql format.

But the issue is that date in dirty date is in different formats
e.g.

14 sept 2012
14 SEPTEMBER 2012
14th sept 2012
14th sept 12
14 sept 12
etc

How to convert every date in single sql DATE format??

Answer 1

try this:

create table tmp_date(col1 varchar(100));

insert into tmp_date
VALUES('14 sept 2012'),('14 SEPTEMBER 2012'),('14th sept 2012'),('14th sept 12'),('14 sept 12')

select convert(datetime,left(col1,2)+'-'+lower(SUBSTRING(col1,CHARINDEX(' ',col1,1)+1,3))+'-'+ltrim(rtrim(reverse(LEFT(REVERSE(col1),CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(col1),1)))))) from tmp_date