Combining (concatenating) date and time into a datetime

Question

Using SQL Server 2008, this query works great:

select CAST(CollectionDate as DATE), CAST(CollectionTime as TIME)
from field

Gives me two co

Answer 1

Assuming the underlying data types are date/time/datetime types:

SELECT CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(CHAR(8), CollectionDate, 112) 
  + ' ' + CONVERT(CHAR(8), CollectionTime, 108))
  FROM dbo.whatever;

This will convert CollectionDate and CollectionTime to char sequences, combine them, and then convert them to a datetime.

The parameters to CONVERT are data_type, expression and the optional style (see syntax documentation).

The date and time style value 112 converts to an ISO yyyymmdd format. The style value 108 converts to hh:mi:ss format. Evidently both are 8 characters long which is why the data_type is CHAR(8) for both.

The resulting combined char sequence is in format yyyymmdd hh:mi:ss and then converted to a datetime.