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.
date format
Creating Calendar View Reports in SQL Server
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.
Handling Month Names in Different Languages in SQL Server
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.
Displaying Abbreviated and Full Day Names for Reports in SQL Server
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.
Building Readable Dates for Reporting Dashboards in SQL Server
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.
5 Ways to Convert DD/MM/YYYY to DATE in SQL Server
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.
Handling International Date Formats When Casting to DATETIME in SQL Server
Working with dates in SQL Server is usually quite straightforward. There’s a good range of date types and functions that we can use to manipulate date/time values.
But international date formats can undo all that simplicity in a heartbeat. Something as simple as casting a string into a DATETIME type can blow up depending on how the server interprets the input. This often happens when you’re dealing with applications or imports that don’t stick to a single culture or regional setting.
Let’s walk through an example and see why SQL Server behaves this way, and more importantly, how to handle it correctly.
Format Current Date as YYYYMMDD in SQL Server
The ISO 8601 standard says dates should look like YYYY-MM-DD to avoid confusion between formats like MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY. But sometimes you might need to remove the hyphens and display the date as YYYYMMDD. Maybe your software doesn’t accept special characters, or you’re trying to save space. Whatever the case, here are some simple ways to get today’s date into YYYYMMDD format.
Troubleshooting Date Format Errors in SQL Server Imports
Importing data into SQL Server is usually quite straightforward. That is, until you run into date and time formatting issues. Dates that look fine in a CSV, Excel, or flat file can suddenly throw errors or, worse, silently load with the wrong values. Since SQL Server is strict about how it interprets dates, mismatches between source file formats and SQL Server’s expectations are one of the most common headaches during imports.
This article looks at why these errors happen, what SQL Server expects, and how to troubleshoot these pesky date format issues.
Format Current Date as DD/MM/YYYY in SQL Server
If you’re in a country that uses DD/MM/YYYY format for your dates, then you’ll likely find yourself needing to display the current date in that format when you generate reports or data that’s intended to be read by humans.
Here are four methods to format the current date as DD/MM/YYYY in SQL Server.
