Random value for DATETIME column

Today, I am going to describe how to generate random value for DATETIME field within a given range. This is very useful specially for generating test data. For this, we will use couple of built-in functions like:

• DATEDIFF
• DATEADD
• RAND
• ROUND

Random DATETIME Value

DECLARE @startDate DATETIME -- start date
DECLARE @endDate DATETIME -- end date
DECLARE @noOfSec INT -- variable
DECLARE @randomSec INT -- variable

SET @startDate = '2021-06-27 08:00 AM' -- assigning starting date
SET @endDate = '2021-06-27 08:30 AM' -- assigning end date

-- assigning end date -- Get the number of seconds within the date range
set @noOfSec = DATEDIFF(SECOND, @startDate, @endDate)

-- Get random seconds within the date range
set @randomSec = ROUND(((@noOfSec-1) * RAND()), 0)

-- Add the random seconds to get the random datetime value within the daterange
SELECT DATEADD(SECOND, @randomSec, @startDate)

Hope this will be useful for you. Happy TSQLing!

This is first published here