How to Get the Previous Month in T-SQL

Problem

You would like to display the previous month (without time) in a SQL Server database.

Solution

SELECT MONTH(DATEADD(MONTH, -1, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP));

Discussion

To get the previous month in SQL Server, subtract one month from today's date and then extract the month from the date. First, use CURRENT_TIMESTAMP to get today's date. Then, subtract 1 month from the current date using the DATEADD function: use MONTH as the date part with -1 as the parameter. Finally, extract the month from the received date using the MONTH() function.