SQL SERVER CONVERT UPDATE
Update User Settings: In the Admin Console, update your User settings to provide values for these User Attributes. Fortunately, LookML is able to handle this data type.Ĭreate User Attributes: In the Looker Admin Console, create the following User Attributes. Unfortunately, SQL Runner does not show the epoch_time (DATETIMEOFFSET data type) correctly. INSERT INTO looker_scratch.epoch_time (epoch_int, epoch_time) VALUES The last few records will help demonstrate datetime conversions for daylight savings time. In SQL Runner, create the following table with a bigint (unix epoch integer time) and datetimeoffset fields. This example assumes you have a looker_scratch database schema and a MS SQL connection in Looker. # Time conversion UTC Epoch integer to EST timeĮst_time = DATEADD(s, epoch_int, '19700101') AT TIME ZONE 'UTC' AT TIME ZONE timezone_name The AT TIME ZONE function provides a better time zone conversion option to account for daylight savings time.Įst_time = utc_time AT TIME ZONE 'UTC' AT TIME ZONE timezone_name However, these time zone offset options do not “elegantly” account for daylight savings time. Local_pdt_int = epoch_int + (3600 * tz_offset) Since Unix Epoch Times are integers, you could convert times using a tz_offset and the number of seconds/hour (3600).
SWITCHOFFSET() allows you to convert datetimes based on a time zone offeset string, -HH:MM. This data type explicitly captures the time zone and with this data type, there are several useful time zone conversion functions. Utc_datetime = DATEADD(s, epoch_int, '19700101')Īs of SQL Server 2008, the DATETIMESOFFSET data type is available. Also, integers are generally better/faster fields for storage and indexing, because they use less space. As such, these datetimes are stored as integer or bigint data types.
Many Unix/Linux servers store datetimes as Epoch time, the integer number of seconds (or milliseconds or microseconds) since January 1, 1970. UTC has an advantage in that it is constant, based on GMT, and does not change for daylight savings. Most modern database servers store datetimes in the UTC time zone. Is the data stored in UTC time or in the time zone of the server? With these fields, the time zone was not intuitive or explicit. Traditionally, DBA’s would use either DATETIME or SMALLDATETIME data types for datetime fields. When creating your database tables, one must decide the appropriate data types to use. The DATEPART() function provides access to each date-time component as building blocks for creating date-strings.Īnd as of SQL Server 2012, FORMAT() and PARSE() functions are available for converting datetimes to strings and strings to datetimes, respectively.ĭatetime_string = FORMAT(my_datetime, 'yyyy-MM-dd HH-mm:ss.ffff') These numerical codes are not intuitive and difficult to remember.ĭatetime_string = CONVERT(CHAR(23), my_datetime, 121)
SQL SERVER CONVERT CODE
This is not an all-inclusive list.Ĭonvert datetime to string uses a numerical code for each string-datetime format. In MS SQL, there are a few handy conversion functions. However, Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) is NOT a supported database dialect for time conversions. Issue: Looker has various Time Zone Settings for the database connection, Looker instance, User time zones (if enabled), and LookML convert_tz.
SQL SERVER CONVERT HOW TO
Purpose: This article will show you how to convert datetimes in Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) using User Attributes and Liquid Syntax