How to Get Current Date and Time in SQL?

There are many built-in functions to get the current date and time in SQL. In this article, we will discuss how to get the current date and time in SQL with examples.

Three in-built SQL functions to fetch current date and time are:

• SQL GETDATE() Function
• SQL CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() Function
• SQL SYSDATETIME() Function

SQL GETDATE() function returns the current database system date and time in the format ‘YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm: ss. mmm’.

Syntax

The GETDATE() function syntax is:

SELECT GETDATE();

Example

In this example, we use the GetDate() function in SQL to get the current date and time.

Query

SELECT GetDate() AS 'CurrentDATETime';

Output

Get Only Time Part from GETDATE() Function Example

In this example, we will get only the time part from the GETDATE() function in SQL.

Query

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), GETDATE(),108)'hh:mi:ss'

Output

SQL CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() function used to find the current TIMESTAMP (current Date and Time). The CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the same result as GETDATE(). 

Syntax

The CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() function syntax is:

CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

Example

In this example, we use the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() function in SQL to get the current date and time.

Query

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS "CURRENTTIMESTAMP"; 

Output

SQL SYSDATETIME() function is also used to get the current time of the System on which the instance of SQL Server is running. SYSDATETIME() function provides more fractional seconds precision compared to the GETDATE() function.

We can fetch the TIME part from the DATE and TIME value returned from the SYSDATETIME() function as below:

Syntax

The SYSDATETIME() function syntax is:

SYSDATETIME()

Example

In this example, we use the SYSDATETIME() function in SQL to get the current date and time.

Query

SELECT SYSDATETIME() 'Current TIME using SYSDATETIME()'

Output