How to Get Current Date & Time in T-SQL (No Time Zone)

Problem

You’d like to get the current date and time in T-SQL, but you don’t want the time zone offset.

Solution

We’ll use GETDATE(), CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, and SYSDATETIME() to get the current date and time without the time zone offset. The first two functions allow us to get the current time with a lower precision. (GETDATE() is a T-SQL function, while CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is a SQL standard function; both functions return the same data type). The third function, SYSDATETIME(), is a SQL Server function that returns a higher-precision time.

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

Here’s the result of the query:

2019-08-14 10:01:06.983

Discussion

In a SQL Server database, the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function returns the current date and time (i.e. the time on the machine where that SQL Server instance runs) as a datetime datatype. Datetime is a lower-precision time that has a maximum of three fractional seconds. (In our example, this is 983.)

GETDATE() is similar to the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP and returns the same result. The difference is that CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is SQL standard, while GETDATE() is specific to SQL Server.

SELECT GETDATE();

Of course, if you want to get a higher-precision current date and time without a time zone offset, you can use the SYSDATETIME() function. This function returns a datetime2 data type with seven fractional seconds. Look at the example below:

SELECT SYSDATETIME();

Here’s the result:

2019-08-14 10:01:06.9754163