In this blog I will show step by step how I examined the DateTime2 data, in order to find the actual storing format. The basic process is based on reverse engineer by examining the binary data that we get in CONVERT to VARBINARY(16)

* Result: 0x070000000000143B0B

The goals in this blog are: (1) understand how DateTime2 stored in the database, (2) to provide a small glimpse on the process that we can use in order to examine what is going behind the scenes in the Page Data File (for specific data type).

There is a common confusion regarding "displaying format" and "storing format" of dates types. We can find lot of questions in the forums regarding "storing format" of dates, which are actually regarding the "displaying format", in external application.

For example questions like: I am getting the error “DateTime data type resulted in an out-of-range value”, or questions like: “how can I change the DateTime column format in the database”.

In this post I will I will focus on SQL DateTime type. I will organizes the issue using the different terms, and I will give some basic solutions for common issues.