Retrieving date in sql server, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP vs GetDate()

Question

Using SQL Server - which is the fastest or best practice method to use for date retrieval? Is there a difference?

Answer 1

Books Online tells us that CURRENT_TIMESTAMP "is equivalent to GETDATE()".

Answer 2

CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is part of the ANSI SQL spec. GETDATE() is a SQL Server-specific function inherited from the original Sybase code on which SQL Server is based.

They do exactly the same thing, though.

Answer 3

My vote is for CURRENT_TIMESTAMP for 'portability' reasons i.e. why be SQL Server -specific when there is a direct SQL-92 equivalent?

PS why was it not named getdatetime()? Now that SQL Server 2008 has a DATE and TIME data type, we can hope to get support for SQL-92's CURRENT_DATE and CURRENT_TIME, at which point getdate() could be potentially even more confusing.

Answer 4

CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is standard ANSI SQL, and so is theoretically one tiny little island of 'don't need to change' amongst your thousands of SQL Server-specific lines of SQL if you ever need to move databases....