You know what you want the date to look like. You just need the SQL to produce it. So instead of starting with functions and working forward, this article starts with formats and works backward. Each heading is a format you might want, with the code to get you there.
All examples use GETDATE() for simplicity. Replace it with your column name and the query works the same way.
SQL Server gives you two functions for formatting values: FORMAT() and CONVERT(). They overlap enough that it’s not always obvious which one to reach for. This article skips the feature-by-feature breakdown and focuses on answering the question of which one you should use for a given scenario.
If you’ve come from MySQL and you’re trying to use DATE_FORMAT() in SQL Server, you’ve already hit the problem: it doesn’t exist. SQL Server has no DATE_FORMAT() function. The good news is it has two functions that do the same job, and in some cases do it better.
Dates in SQL Server can be surprisingly tricky if you’re new to the game. The way dates are stored is not always the way you want them displayed, and figuring out how to convert one to the other is one of those things every beginner eventually Googles. So let’s walk through it clearly.
When you’re building reports in SQL Server, there’s a good chance you’ll need to display dates in a more human-readable format than the ISO 8601 standard that will likely be returned in the absence of any formatting. Nobody wants to see “2024-03-15” when “March” or “Friday” would make the report instantly clearer. SQL Server gives you several ways to extract and format these labels, and knowing which approach fits your situation can save you time and make your queries cleaner.
Calendar views are one of those report formats that instantly make data more digestible. Instead of scrolling through rows of dates, you get a grid that shows patterns or trends at a glance. You can instantly see which days of the week are busiest, which months see the most activity, or how different time periods compare. SQL Server doesn’t have a built-in calendar view function, but with pivoting techniques and a bit of creativity, you can build exactly what you need.
If your database serves users in different regions, controlling how month names appear is one of those small but important details. Maybe you’re generating reports for users across regions, or exporting data that needs to match a specific locale. Whatever the case, sometimes you just need SQL Server to show month names in a different language.
This article walks through how SQL Server handles month names under different language and locale settings, and how you can control that behavior.
When building reports in SQL Server, dates are probably one of the most common pieces of data you’ll deal with. Sometimes a report needs the full day name like “Monday”, while in other cases a short form like “Mon” is preferred, often to save space. Luckily, SQL Server has built-in functionality to handle both, without having to manually map numbers to names.
Let’s look at how we can display abbreviated and full day names in queries so that our reports are nice and easy to read.
When you’re putting together reporting dashboards, raw datetime values like 2025-09-23 13:45:32.000 don’t do much for the average business user. People want to see “Sep 2025” or “Tuesday, September 23, 2025” rather than a timestamp that looks like it came straight from the database.
In many cases, formatting can also be handled in the reporting or application layer, which may be better for things like localization and display preferences. But there are plenty of situations where it makes sense to do this work in SQL Server itself. For example, maybe you need consistency or business-specific date logic. Fortunately, SQL Server gives us several tools for shaping dates into clear, readable labels that work well in dashboards.
Converting a string in DD/MM/YYYY format to a DATE type can be done in several ways in SQL Server. This article presents five options along with examples.