Question

In a SQL-database I make some selects, that get an duration (as result of a subtraction between two dates) in seconds as an int. But I want to format this result in a human-readable form like ‘hh:mm’ or ‘dd:hh’. Is that possible in SQL and how can I realize this?

Answer 1

In SQL 2005, You can use the following:

    select convert(varchar(8), dateadd(second, [SecondsColumn], 0),  108) 

Which first converts the seconds into a date after 1900-01-01, and then gets the hh:mm:ss part.

If the column is more than 24 hours, this will roll over, if you want days and then hours in that case just do something like:

case when SecondsColumn> (24*60*60)          then              cast(datepart(day,datediff(dd, 0, dateadd(second, SecondsColumn, 0))) as varchar(4))         +   'd' + convert(varchar(2), dateadd(second, SecondsColumn, 0), 108)      else             convert(varchar(8), dateadd(second, SecondsColumn, 0), 108)      end