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Problem with datediff in SQL not calculating correctly

SQL Code CAST(DATEDIFF(ss, StartDate, StopDate) AS Numeric(4 , 0))

Result

2014-01-26 15:01:00.000      2014-01-26 15:01:20.000      60
2014-01-26 15:04:50.000      2014-01-26 15:05:00.000      20

Expected

2014-01-26 15:01:00.000      2014-01-26 15:01:20.000      20
2014-01-26 15:04:50.000      2014-01-26 15:05:00.000      10

All ideas most welcome

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Dale Burrell

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knightEknight

My test code produces the desired results, so I'm not sure why you would be seeing a different result. What are the column types of the start and stop date(s)? Note that it would only take a few days difference between the two dates to overflow the numeric(4,0) field.

declare @StartDate datetime , @StopDate datetime

select @StartDate = '2014-01-26 15:01:00.000' , @StopDate = '2014-01-26 15:01:20.000'
select CAST(DATEDIFF(ss, @StartDate, @StopDate) AS Numeric(4,0))

select @StartDate = '2014-01-26 15:04:50.000' , @StopDate = '2014-01-26 15:05:00.000'
select CAST(DATEDIFF(ss, @StartDate, @StopDate) AS Numeric(4,0))

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Scott Pletcher

Hmm. It looks like it had to be that the real difference was, say, 10020, which was then truncated to become 0020 in the final result.

But that would normally cause either an error or a NULL value, depending on your SQL settings.

Is it possible that the actual code and computations might have allowed the value to be truncated that way without causing an error?