Difference between two dates in exact number of hours in SQL

Question

I would like to calculate the exact hours difference between two datetime variables. The hours difference should be exact like this:

1.5
2
6.25

Anybody please help out..Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

You could use DATEDIFF to find the difference in minutes and convert that into hours:

select datediff(mi, startdate, enddate)

Assuming 1.5 means 1 hour and 30 minutes you could simply divide the result by 60:

select datediff(mi, startdate, enddate) / 60.0

Answer 2

Keep it simple:

declare @date1 datetime
declare @date2 datetime

select @date1 = GETDATE();
select @date2 = '2013-02-02 14:05'

select DATEDIFF(hh, @date2, @date1)


Results
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71

(1 row(s) affected)