Calculating the difference in minutes between two datetime columns

Published: 05 Nov 2002

I would like to calculate the difference in minutes between two datetime columns. Sometimes there will not be a second datetime for comparison, so I need to handle that. I am currently performing a simple subtraction and storing the result as datetime, which is accurate but yields the result as time since 1900.

Use the DATEDIFF function e.g.

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 select datediff(mi,Date1, IsNull(Date2, Date1)) from Table1

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Here we also use the IsNull function to say give us the difference in minutes between Date1 and Date2 unless Date2 is Null in which case use Date1 (which will produce a difference of 0).

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