Difference Between Datetime and Timestamp in Sqlserver? [Duplicate]

Difference Between Datetime and Timestamp in Sqlserver? [Duplicate]

What is the difference between Timestamp and Datetime SQL Server?

I thought Both formats are capable of storing date + time. Then, Where the difference is lying between them?

But Timestamp is not capable of storing date, time information.

Still Whats the difference?

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2 Answers

According to the documentation, timestamp is a synonym for rowversion - it's automatically generated and guaranteed1 to be unique. datetime isn't - it's just a data type which handles dates and times, and can be client-specified on insert etc.


1 Assuming you use it properly, of course. See comments.

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Datetime is a datatype.

Timestamp is a method for row versioning. In fact, in sql server 2008 this column type was renamed (i.e. timestamp is deprecated) to rowversion. It basically means that every time a row is changed, this value is increased. This is done with a database counter which automatically increase for every inserted or updated row.

For more information:

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