Solutions to Unusual Problems


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GETUTCDATE vs. GETDATE with timezones and daylight savings

In a recent project, we had to deal with SQL Server transactions that involved multiple timezones and required us to calculate the time employee’s worked across a 24×7 retail chain.  Every time someone clocked-in or clocked-out we recorded the current time so we could later calculate the hours worked.  The problem was that the original developers had used the “DATETIME” field but had placed the default to be “GETDATE()” which uses the current time of the server.  Therefore,  in order to accurately calculate the time difference two times requires complicated daylight savings time lookup tables and more effort in the User Interface.  Here is how we solved it. Read Full Article