Why Should We Use DATETIMEOFFSET?
The DATETIMEOFFSET data type offers a variety of applications. Following are the reasons we should use DATETIMEOFFSET in our databases:
- It provides accurate time tracking across various time zones.
- It provides global application support. Must be used when we are handling Flight schedules, global communication supports, customer orders across different time zones.
- It has larger a date range than the DATETIME datatype. DATETIMEOFFSET offers range from January 1, 0001 to December 31, 9999.
- Provides an accuracy of 100 nanoseconds which is way better than the other data types.
- Provides decimal precision up to 7 digits.
SQL Server DATETIMEOFFSET Data Type
When we are working with different times and dates in the SQL server we struggle with the different time zones. In this article, we are going to explore the data type DATETIMEOFFSET in SQL Server which helps us to resolve this problem. But before you deep dive into this article make sure you are familiar with the basics of SQL Server and data types like DATETIME and DATETIME2.